Although some of the stories are comparable with Doyle's earlier work, this collection is often considered a lesser entry in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Kyle Freeman, author of the introduction to The Complete Sherlock Holmes, is particularly critical of "The Mazarin Stone" and "The Three Gables", stating that "[a]lmost nothing about either of 'The Mazarin Stone' or 'The Three Gables' has the true ring of Conan Doyle's style about them."[16]
Two authors who have written novels using Sherlock Holmes as a character, British writer David Stuart Davies and American author and director Nicholas Meyer have criticized stories from this collection. Davies has commented that "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" "veers towards risible science fiction". In his 1974 novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Meyer's Watson claims that this entry, as well as three others from the Case-Book ("The Mazarin Stone", "The Three Gables" and "The Lion's Mane"), are forged "drivel".
David Timson noted the new era of the 1920s in an introduction to The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: "It seems amazing therefore that a new series of Sherlock Holmes stories should have appeared as late as the 1920s. But despite the 1920s being the age of jazz and the flapper, where such items as telephones, electric light, electric bells, motor cars, and gramophones were becoming commonplace, the Holmes phenomenon showed no signs of diminishing. The stories, despite being set for the most part in the early 1900s, were still as eagerly read as ever. Indeed, modern technology was encouraging Holmes's popularity. By 1921 the developing silent film industry already had 15 Sherlock Holmes adaptations on its shelves, including a full-length Hound of the Baskervilles. Between 1921 and 1927 Conan Doyle once again returned to his great creation for 12 more stories which were first published in The Strand, and then published collectively as The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes in 1927."[17]
Recognizing that some reviewers have found the short stories in this collection as not like Conan Doyle's style, Timson suggests that "In these stories, Conan Doyle seems to be struggling to find a new narrative style. Nine are related by Watson as the reader would expect, but one is narrated in the third person, and two by Holmes himself. Watson is at pains in the opening narrative to "Thor Bridge" to explain the change: 'In some [cases] I was myself concerned and can speak as an eye-witness, while in others I was either not present or played so small a part that they could only be told as by a third person.' ... Conan Doyle’s struggle to ring the changes on what had become for him a tired formula reflected his personal literary journey: he was reluctant to write fiction at all by the 1920s in view of his commitment to spiritualism."[17]
Three stories of the collection are not narrated by Dr Watson, unlike most Sherlock Holmes stories. "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is narrated in the third person, since it was adapted from a stage play in which Watson hardly appeared. "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" and "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" are both narrated by Holmes himself, the latter being set after his retirement.
