2 out of 4 stars
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The Complete Diaries of Young Arthur Conan Doyle by John Raffensperger and Richard Krevolin consists of three fictitious journals supposedly written by Arthur Conan Doyle himself, the author of the original Sherlock novels. The book attempts to describe how he gained the inspiration for writing his books while learning to practice medicine by observing his mentor, Dr. Bell, use the power of deduction to provide incredible diagnoses.
It's an exciting book overall - the action scenes are written very well, and the mysteries, while some details are a bit predictable, are suspenseful and wonderfully over-the-top. The characters, for the most part, are distinct and engaging, with a variety of villains and motives. In my opinion, one of the book's strengths was in its dialogue. I was also surprised by how in-depth the medical procedures were, and Dr. Bell's diagnoses even taught me about some medical concepts I wasn't aware of.
From scene to scene, this book was very strong. Where it came apart a bit was with its overarching plot. Doyle met people who are now famous at every stage of his journey, particularly writers, and the dramatic action and schemes felt quite at odds with the aspects of the book that were grounded in reality. I also felt that, as a narrator, Doyle was rather weak. One of his character traits is that he develops crushes on practically every attractive woman he meets, and this became very tiring, especially when it came at the cost of learning more about the female characters themselves.
It's also worth mentioning the copious grammatical errors. There weren't as many issues with confusing homonyms as I often see in similar writing, but a large number of conjunctions had issues with commas, and there were also many instances of using apostrophes for plural nouns. This was so prevalent that it couldn't help but be distracting. It also felt strangely contradictory to the otherwise rather intellectual writing style, which included words like "obeisance" in addition to scientific medical terms.
Despite its flaws, I had a great deal of fun reading The Complete Diaries of Young Arthur Conan Doyle. However, relying so much on happenstance and implausibility in mystery book - and realistic fiction, no less - was a serious detriment to the book. When compounded with the grammatical errors, I can only rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I'd recommend it to fans of action and medical thriller books; people strictly interested in mystery books are likely to be disappointed.
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The Complete Diaries of Young Arthur Conan Doyle
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