Sherlock Holmes for #Noirvember

For my first book to read this year for #Noirvember, I decided to go classical with an early adventure of Sherlock Holmes that I have been wanting to rediscover for a while. I have thus decided to read The Sign of Four (or The Sign of the Four, which is its original title, but I think it sounds lame). I had first read it when I was something like 14 and I had wanted to read it again in the original language. It may sound a bit too old for Noirvember, but rediscovering the work of Arthur Conan Doyle as an adult is one of my ongoing projects, for one, and there is plenty of violence and brutality in it. I also find the character of Jonathan Small to be a very modern and dark character: ruthless and villainous, but with at least some sense of justice and fairness, and some excuse for his actions. He ends up a rather tragic character, come to think of it, and the ancestor of many villainous protagonists in crime fiction. And I cannot forget that this is where Holmes is first depicted as a cocain user. So in many ways, it is very Noir indeed, certainly Noir enough for this month.