The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Speckled Band

Emma Wang

I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Speckled Band. I started reading this story on the afternoon of the 15th of November and I finished reading it on the morning of the 17th of November. In the world, the series of Sherlock Holmes books are famous detective fiction, and this story is in one of these series. The author is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and this story takes place in 1883 on the western border of Surrey, England.
There are two main people in this story. The first is Sherlock Holmes, a great detective. A lot of people usually visit Holmes at 221B Barker Street when they have difficult questions. The second is his best friend, Dr Watson. He is always with Holmes and taking note of the cases. This story is about a young woman and from Dr Watson's perspective.

One day, a frightened young woman came to visit Holmes and her name is Helen Stoner. Helen tells Holmes a case: Two years ago, and only two weeks before her marriage, Helen's sister died suddenly. Helen listened to a low whistle and a noise like a heavy piece of metal falling just before she found her sister. Now Helen wants to marry, and strangely similar events are happening in her home. So Helen was very frightened and visited Holmes quickly.

Holmes pays attention to this case, and goes to Helen's home with Dr Watson. Holmes looks at that house inside and outside very carefully, and then he was very serious and tells Helen: "We will spend the night in your room. We will try to discover the reason for the noise that you have heard." Helen agrees to this. At midnight that evening, Holmes and Watson found a snake in Helen's room and Holmes strikes it, and then the snake went back and killed its owner, the criminal, the stepfather of Helen. At the end, Holmes explains that an inheritance is why Helen's stepfather killed Helen's sister and tried to kill Helen.

I think this story is telling me to 'pay attention to the details in life' and I think the best point in this book is that Holmes strikes the snake, because a lot of people couldn't do this. Between the very dark and very light it is difficult to see anything.
I think this book is good and very interesting. The English level I rate as about right so I want to introduce this book to all my friends.