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DanSchwent

Dantastic Book Reviews

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The Valley of Fear -  Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes and Watson investigate a murder in a country mansion, a man shot in the face with a sawn off shotgun. Things quickly prove not to be as they seem. But what does the murder have to do with the Valley of Fear...

First off, I'm not the biggest Sherlock Holmes fan and was at a loss when Valley of Fear was announced as a book in the Hard Case line. While I respect Arthur Conan Doyle as one of the pioneers of detective fiction, I was never really interested in him or Holmes. In my quest to read all of the Hard Case Crime books, I finally had to bite the bullet and give Valley of Death a try. I wasn't disappointed.

The initial mystery was well done, though I tipped to what actually happened fairly early on, probably because I'd seen the same scenario before, most recently in an episode of the X-Files. The flashback provided most of the action of the story but was also the part I had a problem with. Did half of the story have to be a flashback?

Valley of Fear was a good read and I'm glad I read it. I'll probably read more A.C. Doyle in the future but hopefully not as part of the Hard Case library.