The Valley of Fear and Selected Cases

I've been having a good time reading through the major Sherlock Holmes works. The short stories and the novels are fun mysteries, though I see more similarities in plots as I go along.

None of them have been quite as impressive to me as the first one, Study in Scarlet, so far. Valley of Fear is the closest to it in structure. There is a seemingly baffling murder, connected to a backstory that is told by a narrator who isn't Watson.

My only reservation about this one is the inclusion of Moriarty as a string-puller in the plot. I realize there must have been some audience expectation to include Moariaty but it feels forced.