YVO’S SHORTIES #244 – The Hound Of The Baskervilles & Dead Souls

Time for another round of Yvo’s Shorties! This time around two detective thriller sequels that both hit the mark.

Title: The Hound Of The Baskervilles
(Sherlock Holmes #5)
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Classics, Mystery, Thriller
First published: January 10th 1902
Publisher: Penguin Books
Finished reading: August 1st 2021
Pages: 214

“The past and the present are within my field of inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.”

I’m slowly making my way through the Sherlock Holmes books and as I wasn’t in the mood for an anthology I decided to skip ahead to one of his (probably) most famous stories: The Hound Of The Baskervilles. I confess that I already knew how the story would unfold, but I still enjoyed my time with this story. Dr. Watson plays a big role in this case, as he is the one who follows the client to Dartmoor to investigate what is going on… As always, we hear the story from his POV, and while the pace is quite slow, I was still entertained by it all. The hint at the supernatural with the mystery around the hound and the Baskervilles, the investigations, the way Sherlock Holmes always seems to deduct the smallest details and the truth behind it all… I think this has been one of my favorites of the series so far.

Title: Dead Souls
(DI Kim Stone #6)
Author: Angela Marsons
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Detective
First published: April 28th 2017
Publisher: Bookouture
Finished reading: August 3rd 2021
Pages: 414

“People aren’t born bigoted. They are made that way.”

I know I’m SO late when it comes to the DI Kim Stone party, but now that I’ve finally joined this year I’m not letting go again. I’m really enjoying my time with this detective series so far and Dead Souls is already the seventh time I’ve been able to meet up with new favorite detective Kim Stone and the rest of her team. And it is without doubt another winner! Dark, twisted, shocking, action-packed… Book number six is once again no picnic and this time focuses on racism and hate crimes. It’s a story that will make you feel uncomfortable and that will entertain and educate at the same time; the race element is well developed and incorporated into the plot. Another change is that we have a temporary split team this time around, and while I missed them working all together, I did warm up to the new dynamics after a little while. A bonus of having Kim and the rest of the team apart is that we get to see multiple investigations evolve, and another bonus is that we have Doctor A showing up again too. The writing is once again brilliant, making it so easy to just keep turning those pages especially once things started to get really intense. I already can’t wait to read the next one soon!