It wasn't intentional. It just happened that I read Jonas Jonasson's "The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" while reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes".
While I enjoyed reading Jonasson's book, it eventually got to the point where I couldn't suspend my disbelief any more. The main character, Allan Karlsson, just happens to be involved in certain world events during his lifetime (the atomic bomb, the Korean War, the Spanish Civil War, etc.). While many people are involved in world events, by the end of the book I just couldn't believe that one person could coincidentally be involved in so many of them.
I have only read two stories from the complete Sherlock Holmes so far ("A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of the Four"). These also involve world events. In these stories, so far it is the culprit's backstory that involves the telling of the historical events. In the first it is the history of the Mormons in Utah and a bit about their religious behaviours. In the second, it is the Indian Rebellion of 1857. There are history lessons in both the Jonasson and Doyle books; however, I find them more palatable in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Even though the events are recounted briefly (within a chapter) in both the Jonasson and Doyle books, I find that Doyle's writing style makes the world events far more interesting to read.
The way that Doyle has incorporated the world events into the two stories I have read so far intrigue me as to what other events will be mentioned in upcoming stories.
Read on,
Paula
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