Originally published in The Strand magazine in 1903, Dancing Men is slightly atypical for a Arthur Conan Doyle short. It is one of only two Sherlock Holmes mysteries where the client dies shortly after enlisting the services of Holmes and Watson (the other being The Five Orange Pips, 1891).

I can’t say that this is my favorite Sherlock Holmes collection but the stories, brief as they are, are each clever and entertaining.
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*Slightly off-topic: Does anyone else picture Basil Rathbone in their mind’s eye when reading Sherlock Holmes?