The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Perhaps no fictional character has been as diluted by their own popularity as Sherlock Holmes. Fictional detectives of all stripes--OCD Monk, Shawn Spencer from Psych, Lieutenant Columbo, Hercule Pirot--crib from Holmes's bag of tricks. Even the deerstalker cap and pipe, rarely mentioned in the stories themselves, have become iconic, indicating mystery when they appear in silhouette on the spine of a book.

With that in mind, why even read The Hound of the Baskervilles? Not only is it a story about Sherlock Holmes, familiar to everyone from your grandmother to your niece, it may be the defining story. The title at least has passed into popular parlance, just like the name of its protagonist. That's why those reading it for the first time might be a little surprised at what they find.

Holmes, as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is no do-gooder saint. He's an egotistical, arrogant, cocaine-abusing, opium-smoking, lying misanthrope, far from the good-hearted detectives built ostensibly in his mold. He treats his partner and only friend, Dr. Watson, with a mixture of condescension and concern, has no problem with breaking the law to solve his cases, and, really, just doesn't think of the children. However, it's not in spite of his flaws but because of them that Holmes is such an enjoyable creation. He is completely without superstition and without the slightest doubt in his abilities.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of only four Sherlock Holmes novels written by Doyle. Holmes is called into the case by a doctor drawn into a strange case. Charles Baskerville, wealthy landowner, is found dead without a mark on his body, thought to have been felled by a giant black Hell hound who haunts the family. Holmes takes the case, but, unable to go himself, he sends Watson to investigate and report back. Hound stands out from the short stories because Holmes himself is absent from large parts the novel, and the reader is given unfiltered information from Watson's letters back to Holmes. The end of the story, where Holmes captures the criminal and explains his methods is satisfying on a visceral level. Almost nothing is left unanswered, and the plotlines fit like a puzzle. It just works.

That, ultimately, is why reading Sherlock Holmes is still worthwhile. In spite of the doppelgangers, Holmes himself still stands alone, an idiosyncratic literary creation that is often imitated but never duplicated. This year sees the release of two movies based on Sherlock Holmes, one a comedy and one a complete reinvention, starring a gay, karate-kid Sherlock, but for those interested in Sherlock Holmes, the original stories are the place to start.

Bonus: Word Cloud!

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I like a good detective story and that is exactly what Doyle delivers in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is nothing like the bespectacled man I remember from Wishbone Classics as a child. He's actually a rather seedy character with an addiction to cocaine and an aversion to law enforcement officers who is described as being "bohemian". In order to do his detective work, he's often breaking just as many laws as the people he's trying to track down. The narrator is Holmes' friend Dr. Watson, an amiable family man who spends his free time helping the detective and sometimes chronicaling their mishaps. (I would like to point out here that prior to writing, Doyle was a doctor.) Watson seems to be a foil for Holmes more than anything else, as he's portrayed as being more stable over all. It's Watson that does the gun toting when things get serious, though-- the only weapon that we see Holmes use at all is a whip. One last character note about our daring detective is that he seems to be another Victorian asexual male hero. The only woman he's interested in at all is Irene Adler-- the one person to ever outsmart him in a case invovling the King of Prussia.

The stories are rather neatly tied together with a neat beginning, middle, and end... the kind of formulaic writing we learn to abide by in our early schooling. The beginnings of each short story are the only really painful things to read, however. You are introduced to Holmes' new client who is in need of his help because their fiance has vanished into thin air, someone is blackmailing them with a photograph, ect. Then Holmes uses his keen observational skills to point out things about the client that only a psychic could know-- for instance, he can tell a woman is a typist because of wear on a certain part of her sleeves. Every time Watson is just shocked at Holmes' attention to detail while I was just yawning.

These stories reminded me quite a bit of Poe's detective fiction, for example "The Murders at Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter". I found Doyle's writing to be more interesting and over all superior by far. Doyle gave the reader a better chance at figuring out the story's quirk along with Holmes, though in some cases, such as "A Case of Identity", he gave a little bit too much away from the start. As today's detective fiction is filled with too many technological gadgets and CSI nonsense, Poe is the only thing I know to compare with this.

I wouldn't recommend the whole book, but I'd at least check out one or two to see what Doyle has to offer. You can do this without buying the book if you go to the website readprint.com, which also has a lot of other classic works that are past the copywrite date now.