The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Book Two by Catherine Sadler

This book is an adapted version for adolescent readers, and I gave it a rating of four out of five. The book contains several short mysteries, and the main character is the famous, fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. In the first story, a man wants to give a young woman half of a lost treasure, but his brother is killed and the treasure is lost. The second mystery concerns a stolen gem that turns up in the stomach of a goose, and the third mystery is about a girl who is murdered inside of a locked room.

Sherlock Holmes's strength is his ability to make inferences from his careful observations. Other characters see the same things, but he is able to make connections and deductions from them. For example, by looking at an old pocket watch, he was able to figure out that a man had inherited it from his father, had done well financially but had fallen on hard time, and had been a drunk. The story is narrated by Holmes's long-time assistant, Dr. Watson. This book is a nice bridge to the more sophisticated mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.