1887
A Study in Scarlet
SS
A spectral hound, a cursed family, and the fog-drowned moor — the most famous Sherlock Holmes story ever written, and the one that brought the detective back from the dead.
Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the grounds of his Dartmoor estate, his face frozen in terror — and near the body, the footprints of a gigantic hound. Local legend says the Baskervilles have been cursed for centuries, hunted across the moor by a demonic dog ever since a wicked ancestor's crime.
When the last heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, arrives from Canada to claim the estate, Dr. Mortimer brings the case to Baker Street. Holmes, detained in London, sends Watson to Dartmoor as his eyes and ears — which means much of the book is Watson's story, and he more than carries it: reporting on the strange household staff, an escaped convict loose on the moor, and neighbors who each seem to be hiding something.
Doyle wrings everything he can from the setting — the sucking bogs of Grimpen Mire, prehistoric stone huts, howls in the night — while keeping one foot planted in rational detection. The tension between supernatural dread and cold logic is the whole engine of the book, and the resolution honors both.
Yes — it's the consensus pick for the best Sherlock Holmes novel and one of the most influential mysteries ever published.
Fair warnings: Holmes himself is offstage for a big stretch of the middle, which disappoints some first-time readers expecting wall-to-wall deduction — this is substantially Watson's book. The mystery's solution is also simpler than modern readers may expect; the pleasure is atmosphere and momentum more than puzzle complexity. And as with all Victorian-era fiction, a few attitudes show their age. None of that dents its status: it's short, propulsive, genuinely eerie, and the reason 'the game is afoot' still echoes 120 years later.
More than almost any novel in existence — it's been filmed over twenty times. Highlights include the 1939 film with Basil Rathbone's definitive Holmes, the 1959 Hammer version starring Peter Cushing (the first Holmes film in color), and the 1988 Granada TV adaptation with Jeremy Brett. Modern viewers may know it best as 'The Hounds of Baskerville,' the 2012 episode of the BBC's Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch, which reimagines the hound through a chemical-warfare lab called Baskerville.
No. The Holmes stories are almost all self-contained cases, and Doyle wrote them for magazine readers who dipped in anywhere. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the fifth Holmes book but requires zero background — you only need to know that Holmes is a brilliant detective and Watson is his friend and chronicler, which the book itself makes clear. If you prefer to start at the beginning, that's A Study in Scarlet (1887).
Pleasantly so. It's Gothic suspense rather than horror — dread, fog, and a legend of a demon hound rather than gore. Doyle keeps you unsure whether the threat is supernatural right up to the climax on the moor. It's often recommended to readers as young as middle school.
Without spoiling the mechanics: this is a Sherlock Holmes story, and Holmes does not believe in demon dogs. The novel's fun is watching a seemingly supernatural legend get pulled apart by observation and logic — while Doyle keeps the hairs on your neck up anyway.
Doyle had killed Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893 and resisted public pressure to revive him. In 1901 he began Hound as a story that needed a great detective, and set it before Holmes's death rather than undoing it. Its enormous success helped push Doyle to fully resurrect Holmes two years later in 'The Adventure of the Empty House.'
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