Until I looked it up on my blog, I didn't realize that it's been almost a year since I read anything by this author; you can find my review of "The American Claimant" here, if you are interested.
The picture shows the book cover published on the Project Gutenberg page and not the one I saw when I downloaded my copy from Amazon.
At the start of the book, the reader meets a young couple very much in love in the year 1880. Things take a very bad turn, though, when not long after their wedding, the husband commits a terrible crime against his young wife. He flees the scene, and she is left to bring up their son on her own.
As the son grows up, he is trained by his mother for a special purpose: revenge.
Most of the story deals with how he goes about this task, and several chapters come in the shape of letters he writes to his mother while hot on the heels of his father.
The appearing of Sherlock Holmes on the scene marks the story's pinnacle; after that, it does not take long for everything to end in a rather satisfactory manner.
If you are looking for Mark Twain's usual humour in this short novel (approx. 180 pages in print), you could be disappointed; yes, the whole thing is a satire on the Sherlock Holmes novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and there are some quite funny bits in it, but it is not quite what I expected.
That does not take away from it being an entertaining read, and I guess that is one of the few ebooks I keep on my kindle and do not delete after reading.
It's an odd and small point but it has never even occurred to me to delete a book from my Kindle one it's been read. I suppose that's just an extension of my inability to dispose of paper books when I've read them (usually).
ReplyDeleteWhile I have downloaded well over 80 books to my kindle since I first got it, there are less than 20 each in the two collections that I have set up for the already read ones (one is for fiction and the other one for non-fiction). The ones I did not like very much OR I know I am not going to read a second time have all gone.
DeleteA coincidence: I am just rereading ‘Tom Sawyer’ and will have another go at ‘Huckleberry Finn’ too soon. Both are free on ‘FreeBooks’. I’ve not heard of this detective story, perhaps I’ll look for a it in a little while.
ReplyDeleteTwain was an excellent writer and I thoroughly enjoyed some of his more literary efforts.
He was indeed an excellent writer, Friko, and is one of the people that are on my list of people I'd love to spend an evening with, if time-travel was possible.
DeleteFrom what i gather, Twain thought the Sherlock Holmes thing was silly, and lampooned it a couple of times. If this is one of those, i will have to get it.
ReplyDeleteOh, the scenes involving Sherlock Holmes in this book are the ones that are really funny, Jenny. I think you'll like it.
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