Review: The man with the twisted lip by Arthur Conan Doyle

Synopsis:

A worried wife asks Sherlock Holmes to help her find her husband, who has disappeared from home. She thinks she has seen him looking in a window of an opium den, but when she arrives with the police to investigate she finds only a beggar and the evil Lascar.

Review:

This is my first time reading this highly acclaimed author. I had been wanting to see what the stories of literature's most famous detective were like for some time and there was something that really surprised me, the fact that the story is told from Watson's point of view. I don't know if all his stories will be like this, but this really surprised me.

The story begins with Watson and his wife at home at night, just as they are about to go to bed they ring the doorbell. A woman, a friend of Watson's wife seeks help to find her husband who has been missing for several hours. Knowing the man's addiction to opium, Watson goes to a street where such people gather, promising that if she finds her husband she will bring him back.

And sure enough, she finds him in a place where they rent beds to lie down and get high (I didn't know these places existed). The surprise is that she also finds Sherlock Holmes who is in disguise and in the middle of a case he can't solve.

And this is when the main story of the book begins.

I have to say that it is easy to read and it is a fairly short story. At first I was getting bored but the ending surprised the hell out of me.

I never would have seen it coming.

For the first Arthur Conan Doyle I've read, I was satisfied. It didn't blow my mind but it was worth it.

I found this book and "The Illustrious Customer" for 100 pesos each in a bookstore in my city, both are in hardcover and have large print, which makes it more comfortable to read (I hate small print) but what caught my attention is that this collection comes with a dvd with the movie of what we just read.

I saw it the day after reading it and I liked that they respected almost all the story! It was only small details that didn't match, but more or less 95% of the movie is faithful to the book.