Sherlock Holmes: where to begin and what to read next

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories about Sherlock Holmes between 1887 and 1927. That is a lot of material, and it was not written in the order the events happen. The good news is that almost every story stands alone. You can begin nearly anywhere, but some starting points are much better than others.

The whole canon at a glance

The four novels:

• A Study in Scarlet (1887), in which Holmes and Watson meet
• The Sign of the Four (1890)
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02)
• The Valley of Fear (1914–15)

The fifty-six short stories were first printed in magazines, most of them in The Strand, and then gathered into five books:

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
• His Last Bow (1917)
• The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

Start with the short stories, not the novels

It seems logical to begin with A Study in Scarlet, because it comes first. It is not the best introduction. Half of that novel is a long flashback set in America in which Holmes does not appear at all, and new readers often lose patience.

Holmes became famous through the short stories, and they show him at his best: a problem, a deduction, a chase and a solution in about twenty pages. Begin with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. You will pick up everything you need to know about Baker Street and Dr. Watson within two pages.

Five stories to try first

All five are in the Adventures.

• A Scandal in Bohemia. The first story, and the one with Irene Adler, who beats Holmes at his own game.
• The Red-Headed League. A pawnbroker is paid to copy out the encyclopaedia because of the colour of his hair. The explanation is one of Doyle’s cleverest.
• The Speckled Band. A locked room, a dying woman’s last words and a night-time vigil. Doyle named it his own favourite.
• The Man with the Twisted Lip. A respectable man vanishes in an opium den. A good example of Holmes solving a case by sitting up all night and thinking.
• The Blue Carbuncle. A Christmas story involving a stolen jewel and a goose, and Holmes at his most good-humoured.

A reading order that works

1. The Adventures, in order.
2. The Memoirs. It ends with The Final Problem, in which Holmes meets Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Doyle wrote it in 1893 because he wanted to be rid of his detective.
3. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Written eight years later and set before Holmes’s apparent death. It is the best of the novels and one of the great ghost stories that is not a ghost story.
4. The Return, which opens with The Empty House and explains what really happened at the falls.
5. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, now that you care how the partnership began.
6. His Last Bow, The Valley of Fear and The Case-Book, for when you do not want it to end. The late stories are more uneven, but there are good ones among them.

What the screen versions changed

If you know Holmes from film or television, a few things in the books may surprise you.

• Holmes never says “Elementary, my dear Watson.” He says “Elementary” and he says “my dear Watson”, but not together.
• The deerstalker hat is never named in the stories. It comes from Sidney Paget’s illustrations in The Strand.
• Watson is not a fool. He is a capable army doctor and a good shot. He simply cannot do what Holmes does, and neither can the reader.
• Moriarty appears in person in only one story. His reputation is far larger than his part.
• Holmes is often wrong at first, sometimes fails, and now and then lets a culprit go because he thinks the law would be unjust.

Why they still work

The plots are ingenious, but people reread these stories knowing the solutions. What brings them back is the friendship, the fog and gaslight of London in the 1880s and 1890s, and the pleasure of the opening scenes, when a stranger sits down and Holmes tells them where they have been. Doyle understood that a reader wants to feel clever alongside the detective, and he always shows the clue before explaining it.

Try the first case

The preview on 360book gives you the opening of A Scandal in Bohemia, up to the moment the client arrives. If you enjoy it, the rest of the Adventures is easy to find in any library, because, as our article on the public domain explains, the early Holmes stories have long been free for anyone to print.