Prompt: What’s a book that completely surprised you?

One summer holiday, I took the complete works of Sherlock Holmes to read in the sun, but I was deeply disappointed. Although they are widely praised as great literature, I found the writing poor, the grammar questionable, the sentence structure weak, and the plots predictable and banal. I cannot understand why these novellas are so admired, as I found them thoroughly dreadful.

The Case of the Overpraised Detective

One summer’s golden, languid spell,
I sought what critics praised so well.
Beneath the sun’s approving blaze
I turned to Holmes and Doyle’s great phrase.

The volume, thick with vaunted fame,
Bore proudly Sherlock’s deathless name.
A masterpiece, so all declared,
A titan’s work to be revered.

I settled where the roses bent,
Prepared for hours of high content.
The sky was clear, the day was bright,
The page before me washed in light.

But scarcely had I read a part
Before a gloom oppressed my heart.
For where was genius, where was grace?
I found instead a threadbare case.

The prose was clumsy, flat, and stale,
A draught of weak and watery ale.
The grammar lurched from odd to worse,
Like some ill-harnessed, stumbling hearse.

The sentences, malformed and strained,
Dragged on and on, then oddly waned.
Their structure sagged, their rhythms broke,
Like brittle beams beneath a yoke.

And plots? Ah yes, the plots indeed.
How often did they plod and lead
To endings any child might guess
With half a thought and no finesse.

A footprint here, a cigar ash there,
A client wringing hands in care.
Then Holmes, with smug and narrowed eye,
Would state what all had long guessed why.

The game was stale before begun,
The race concluded ere it run.
No twist to startle or delight,
No thunderclap of keen insight.

Yet still the world bows down in awe,
As though perfection knew no flaw.
And scholars praise with solemn breath
These tales immune to time or death.

I closed the book with some dismay
And laid the celebrated prey
Upon the grass, and there it stayed,
A monument to fuss misplaced.

Perhaps the fault, I thought, was mine.
Perhaps my taste had lost its shine.
Yet no, my honest soul declared,
The emperor was merely bared.

So let the faithful hymn his name
And feed the old detective’s fame.
As for myself, I must confess
I found the whole thing quite a mess.

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• Total Holmes Works: 60 (4 novels + 56 short stories)
• First Appearance: A Study in Scarlet (1887)
• Most Famous Collections: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)

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© Richard J Kirk writing as Joseph R Mason – 2026. If you want to know why, see: About Me…