On my continuing journey through the stories of Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League" really traveled a lot of ground in my esteem for such a short story. It's the story of a man who seeks Holmes' help after losing a position in a somewhat secretive society ostensibly for the furthering of red headed people. The position involved him getting paid a tidy sum to simply hand-copy out the dictionary for four hours each day.
I found this to be a deeply intriguing set-up. Obviously, something didn't quite smell right about this menial clerical work, but I was imagining some vast conspiracy for this secret Red-Head society, and wondering what possible motives Holmes would uncover.
Instead -- SPOILERS in the rest of this paragraph if you want to read the story for yourself -- the entire thing is simply a smokescreen to occupy one particular man's afternoon away from his house so that criminals can dig a tunnel for a bank heist. And while this is certainly a practical explanation for the weird behavior, I found it ultimately a very disappointing one. I've read or seen many tales of bank heists, even ones that specifically revolve around secretly digging a tunnel. Regardless of whether this one was written by Doyle first (and maybe in part inspired the others I've known), the result was that this story felt so much more run-of-the-mill, even boring, compared to its sensational opening promise.
Holmes gets to the bottom of the mystery quickly, of course, but in this case I found the twist in the plot to be a disappointment, compared to what I might have imagined in my mind. Or maybe I just wanted an adventurous expose on a pro-redhead society just because one particular red-headed man happens to be near and dear to my heart. In any case, I'd grade the story a B-.
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