I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.
Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories
55. The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone (October 1921, Case-Book)
Perhaps the most difficult, poorly written, and tedious story in the canon to slog through, The Mazarin Stone is 5,600 words long, and it reads as if it was feverishly scribbled down in half a day then was sent—without the inconvenience of revision or editing—straight to the printer’s press. Like The Empty House, Mazarin features as its plot a wax bust of Holmes and an assassination attempt on his life. Also like The Empty House, The Mazarin Stone appears as the first story in a volume. Such reiteration leads this reader to wonder whether, when Doyle was reluctantly returning to his Holmes stories, he might have morosely perused over those earlier tales which he used to begin his story collections, settled upon The Empty House as a model, and proceeded from there. If so, he might have been using the method as a way to awaken his creative spirit, in hopes of channeling the inspiration that empowered him to write groundbreaking stories thirty years before. Having started The Case-Book with The Mazarin Stone, Doyle would have had no idea that six years and twelve stories later, the collection would come to be regarded as a rather mixed bag. If he had, he might have taken a different route through the writing process. One can only imagine the direction that The Case-Book could have gone had Doyle managed, in every story, to linger over his word choices and to introduce us to vivified, fascinating characters in the cast of such worthies as Colonel Sebastian Moran, Jabez Wilson, and The Musgrave Ritual’s clever butler, Brunton. Had Doyle been able to do so, such stories as The Mazarin Stone could have had its facets better cut, its polish brightened, and its aspect improved to that of a sovereign treasure.
