His Last Bow is part of the Sherlock Holmes Literary Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle being Volume 8 of the collection, so sadly, I am approaching the end with the final Volume 9 coming up in the wonderful canon of Sherlock Holmes’ magnificent works.

This collection consists of eight works beginning with The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge; The Adventure of the Cardboard Box; The Adventure of the Red Circle; The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans; The Adventure of the Dying Detective; The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax; The Adventures of the Devil’s Foot; and His Last Bow. The War Service of Sherlock Holmes. This takes place in Germany where there is a lot of smuggling of papers and documents and misappropriation of secrets at the height of World War I in 1917. And into this milieu we again see Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend and biographer, Dr. Watson, reunited again after many years. It was a fitting ending to the Sherlock Holmes many tales. ( )

(Three-and-a-half stars, really...)

Conan Doyle's penultimate collection of Holmes short stories really shows the central elements of his work so well: bracing atmospheres, a delightful central pairing, and an eye for acts of murderous legerdemain on the one hand; stilted dialogue, lack of suspects, and often one-dimensional characters on the other.

All of the stories here are very enjoyable, although I'd probably rank none of them on my list of "Top Ten". Wisteria Lodge, which opens the collection, is almost a novella and certainly has a lot in common - thematically and structurally - with the early novels. The Red Circle and Lady Frances Carfax also offer nothing new in terms of ideas. However, all three stories have an expertly-rendered atmosphere, and play well along the relationship of Holmes and Watson. The Devil's Foot does the same, although it has the added benefit of a truly unsettling mystery set-up. It's easy to see from these stories that, by this point, Conan Doyle knows his strengths lie in the Holmes/Watson pairing and the unsettling atmospheres, and he jumps at the chance to provide those.

As with all his works, the dialogue can sometimes be stilted. Not so much with the main characters, or the recurring police inspectors, but with the guest characters, who often lack strong voices (although I'm sure some fans will ascribe this to errors on Doctor Watson's part, and not on the author's?). And interestingly (or unfortunately?) most of the stories have very few suspects - indeed, sometimes we only seem to meet one person connected to the deceased in any detail, which may give the game away. In fact, the question tends to be not "whodunnit?" but "howdunnit?". But perhaps this is fair enough, since the overall emphasis is often on the implausibility or seeming incomprehensibility of the case, rather than the nature of the crime itself.

The Bruce-Partington Plans is an intriguing story, a fusion of spy and detective work which - although, again, means the revelation of the culprit is relatively unimportant - has a fun, pulpy sense of 'the chase'. It allows Holmes and Watson to work as a wonderful team, with a cameo by Holmes' evasive brother Mycroft. The Dying Detective's plot twists will fool no one, but if you've read all the rest of the stories to date, there's plenty to enjoy in a story that so feeds off the relationship of our two heroes.

And finally there is the title story, His Last Bow. I'm not sure if it was written genuinely as a finale, but it certainly is chronologically. This is a disappointment in some ways, since our heroes feature in it only for a short time. But there's a true sense of separation and loss at the end which affected me a little. Unfortunately, the story itself isn't very good: the dialogue is arch, the villain zero-dimensional, and the actions of our heroes at the end (especially given it is set just days before WWI breaks out) would probably not be advised by the Home Office.

In closing: this is not a collection for Holmes newcomers. But it's certainly a vital part of the canon, and well worth a look. ( )

Mostly non-traditional Holmes/Watson stories, in that they are about Holmes post-retirement coming to the service of his country during WWI to help combat espionage. Still enjoyable, but not what we usually expect from Holmes stories. ( )

Wasn't as familiar with some of these stories. I liked "The Adventure of the Dying Detective," "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" and "His Last Bow." Some of the others were more or less gruesome in detail, but not more than the other collections of Holmes stories. "His Last Bow" was very different, being written, not from Watson's point of view, but in the third person, and taking place right on the eve of World War I, when the world was about to change big time. Interesting. ( )

Los últimos años de la vida de Holmes, una época de cambio, se caracterizaron por un talante reflexivo y melancólico poco habitual en él. Sabemos que padeció una enfermedad y que abrió su corazón a un doctor Watson ya «reumático y envejecido». Si en la tumba de Doyle figura el siguiente epitafio: «Temple de acero, rectitud de espada», cabe imaginar que al propio autor le habría gustado grabar uno semejante en la de Sherlock Holmes. O quizá lo ocultó sencillamente porque, para coronar la gloria de su detective, le bastaba atestiguar que Holmes, mientras enviaba su último saludo desde el escenario, desde su retiro sesentón escribía un Manual de apicultura.