The Valley Of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A book review

Spoiler Warning: Contains Spoilers. Proceed at your own peril.

Sherlock Holmes intrigues and impresses. He demands a reverence which i would never offer any other detective fictional or otherwise. So when I was made aware of the fact that there existed a Holmes novel which i hadn't read, my soul became restless. I hunted the book down and immediately started wading through the valley of fear. The first few lines and it takes only one word from Holmes to think that i had missed a very important novel.. Moriarty. So i brace myself for a spine thrilling adventure of deductions and danger. But Holmes disappears after a fairly easy case and the remaining book is spent in forming the backdrop of the ridiculously easy case(set in a beautiful castle though, all with moats and drawbridges) and ends without Moriarty making an appearance. This was so much like Study in Scarlet, yet not as heart tugging.

I didn't like it much and this fact alone disturbs my conscience. But oh, what could I do? There's so little of Holmes and Watson is absent too, as i am forced to wander alone in the murky valley of the Scrowers, who revel in organized crime. They have a secret brotherhood, requiring a mysterious branding on the arm too.But where is the fun in that? No deductions. No logic. No big revelations. The brotherhood, with all the fancy rituals is simply a gang of criminals murdering mine owners. The best thing about Holmes' stories is the bright warm glory of realization. The feeling never came, even when I had reached the last line of the novel. I couldn't be convinced that the novel had ended(i had to cross check to be sure that my copy didn't have pages missing). Immensely dissatisfying