SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE NOVELS

A Study in Scarlet · The Sign of Four · The Hound of the Baskervilles · The Valley of Fear

In 1886 a doctor living on the southern coast of England decided to try his hand at writing a mystery story. In his notes for A Study in Scarlet, he called his chief characters, if only provisionally, J. Sherrinford Holmes and Ormond Sacker. Wisely, though, Arthur Conan Doyle eventually settled on much better names—indeed just the right names—and so created two of the most beloved figures in all of fiction, the world’s first and only consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and his friend and chronicler Dr. John H. Watson.

Collected here are all four Holmes novels—A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Valley of Fear—with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic and Baker Street Irregular Michael Dirda. These often eerie tales of seemingly impossible crimes, of hidden treasure and supernatural terror and inescapable revenge, have been thrilling readers, young and old, for generation after generation. They move swiftly from cozy 221B Baker Street to the outskirts of gaslit London, or to spooky Dartmoor and its deadly Grimpen Mire, or to distant India and even to the United States. In them Holmes matches wits with some of his most formidable adversaries, including his implacable nemesis Professor James Moriarty. There is ultimately one simple but compelling reason why these four novels have been read and reread, as well as broadcast, filmed, and reinterpreted again and again: they are among the most exciting, atmospheric, and unforgettable stories in all of world literature.

“What you are looking at is a kind of narrative perfection: a perfect interplay between dialogue and description, perfect characterization and perfect timing.”

—John le Carré

“Every writer owes something to Holmes.”

—T.S. Eliot