Fiction

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1 The Adventure of Silver Blaze

Expanding on that 1999 poll I mentioned yesterday, the guy who ran it has a website about it with lots of additional facts and stuff -- more than I'm personally interested in, to be honest. But one thing he's done is produce a table that compiles the results from major Sherlockian polls run in 1944, 1954, 1959, 1989, and his 1999 poll, giving a sort of "poll of polls" ranking of all 56 short stories. I'm not necessarily using this as a slavish guide for which stories to read next, but it's nice to have the info.

On this ranking, The Speckled Band and The Red-Headed League remain first and second, with A Scandal in Bohemia third, and Silver Blaze fourth. It's not a favourite of the Pocket Essentials guy (who scores it 3 out of 5, describing the plot as "rather on the dull side"), thereby justifying my search for a more objective ranking!