This Sherlock Holmes short story is distinct in at least two ways. First, his "client," Stanley Hopkins, is not a complete fool. Though he is of course no match for the super-sleuth himself, he is not the bumbling idiot that the Scotland Yard inspectors invariably are in the Holmes canon. Hopkins has applied many of Holmes' methods; he's just missed some important details. Moreover, he's not willfully advancing an outlandish theory of the crime. Instead, he simply admits he's stumped.
More interesting about the story is the way that Arthur Conan Doyle has stuffed as much as he can into a single clue, the titular golden pince-nez. Most Holmes tales present three or four details that prove key in cracking the case. A few stories have even more. But this story revolves around just this one pair of glasses, and a rather clever set of deductions that derive from it. Not only do the glasses tell Holmes a great deal about their owner, but the fact that they were taken -- thus seriously impairing the attacker's vision -- puts limitations on just what the attacker could have done after the deed.
Along the way, Doyle serves up a few more character details than he usually includes. We see Holmes put on an unusually charming demeanor during a few suspect interviews, and indulge in some furious chain smoking in the name of investigation. Watson is a bit ahead of his normal game too; instead of being utterly amazed and confounded by Holmes' analysis as he so often is, this time he at least follows the clues to a point -- if not to an ultimate solution.
In all, I was rather pleasantly taken by this story, and give it a B+.
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