Hound of the Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Started reading this as an ebook, and then we found a 1970s reprint of the original serial publication in the Strand Magazine, with the original Paget illustrations.  Much different reading experience.  I'd already seen a number of adaptations on the screen - Cumberbatch, Brett, and Cushing, to name a few, and it was interesting to see the differences with canon.

Mostly it was just a really good read, though.  I enjoyed it much more than any of the other Sherlock Holmes material I've read so far.  The gothic is intense and very well done.  The dying ponies!  The escaped convict!  The fog!  The moor!  The baying of the hound!

I also really enjoyed the fact that Doyle's sometimes endless exposition was largely absent by dint of Watson (the narrator) being on the scene for the vast majority of the action. Doyle's style is almost enough to overcome the exposition in most cases, but without the exposition it sparkles.  I also have a theory (based on way too little data :)) that he's better with the long form than the short. 

Sherlock Holmes

I'm reading my way through the Sherlock Holmes canon - I just finished "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" - and I'm finding Doyle's writing style and choices very interesting.

He's made the choice to use one person as narrator - mostly Watson, occasionally Holmes - and to have that person only write down what they witness. This lack of omniscient narrator, combined with Doyle's interest in revealing Holmes' thought processes, leads to a truly astounding amount of exposition.  Doyle's writing style is  remarkably modern - in the sense of short declarative sentences and word choice, and lively enough to almost render the tell-not-showness invisible, or at least acceptable to modern eyes.

I'm enjoying his descriptive passages - he has quite the eye for landscape - and his characters.  He manages to give enough defining characteristics to make them interesting and individual to the mystery.