The Vital Message by Arthur Conan Doyle

I thought this was going to be a Sherlock Holmes mystery, instead I find that the book is an essay written with passion by Doyle. It starts with Doyle trying to shake the very essence of the Christian religion stating that the Old Testament and the New Testament should not be taken verbatim but that it should be modernized with the times. As the essay progresses, it approaches hypnotism and soon turns it attention to explaining the supernatural… psychic phenomenon… showing with examples the different psychic mediums, the people renowned in this profession, how the media at large attack these people and the people at large shun them until they want to seek someone from beyond the grave. The essay is very boring in the beginning and only shows a bit of an edge when Doyle is discussing the psychic phenomenons. I would have long discarded the book except for one single genuine thing… Doyle… whether he writes Sherlock Holmes mystery or the Lost World or this essay… the force of his words makes you read on even though you want to just close the book and forget all about it. His ideas lingers in your mind, making you question things and you do forcefully end up reading the book just to see what all the fuss was about…

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