Salem Press

Critical Survey of Mystery & Detective Fiction
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Born: Edinburgh, Scotland; May 22, 1859
Died: Crowborough, East Sussex, England; July 7, 1930
Type of Plot: Master sleuth
Principal Series: Sherlock Holmes, 1886-1927

Principal Series Characters
Sherlock Holmes is a private investigator and an eccentric researcher in virtually all areas of criminology. He begins taking cases when in his twenties and continues into his sixties, though he has by then retired from his rooms at 221B Baker Street, London, to beekeeping on a South Downs farm. Though loyal to friends and the social order, he remains above his cases, casting the cool light of reason on seemingly insoluble puzzles. A connoisseur of crime, he languishes in depression when no problem worthy of his great powers is before him.

Dr. John H. Watson is a friend and constant companion of Holmes and historian of his cases. Watson meets Holmes while seeking someone to share a flat. Though married and widowed more than once and maintaining a practice as a physician, Watson aids Holmes regularly until his retirement. He admires and emulates his strange and brilliant friend but can never solve the intricate puzzles on which Holmes thrives.

Professor Moriarty, an unscrupulous schemer, the undisputed ruler of London's labyrinthine underworld, is one of Holmes's few intellectual equals.

Contribution
Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories and novellas featuring Sherlock Holmes became enduring classics of the mystery and detective genre. Doyle is credited with refining and developing the formula first realized by Edgar Allan Poe in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." In so doing, he created a form for the detective story that remained enormously popular until World War II and that remained the supreme example of crime fiction throughout the twentieth century. According to John G. Cawelti, this form makes a mythic game of crime; the criminal act becomes a manifestation of potential chaos in the self and society, but the detective asserts reason's power over this element, reassuring the reader of control over the self and safety within the social order. The continuing popularity of Doyle's stories is evidenced by their remaining in print in an abundance of competing editions, the scholarly activity they stimulate, and the proliferation of film and video adaptations—as well as new Holmes tales by other authors.

Biography
Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the fourth child of Charles Doyle and Mary Foley Doyle. Irish Catholics in Protestant Edinburgh, the family felt its minority status. Charles, an artist and public servant, was eventually institutionalized for epilepsy and alcoholism. Seeing talent in young Arthur, the strong and practical Mary Doyle procured for him an excellent education despite their difficult circumstances and eventually saw him through medical school at the University of Edinburgh (1877-1881).

While studying medicine, Doyle published his first story, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley," in 1879. Also while at the university, he met his model for Holmes, Dr. Joseph Bell, to whom he dedicated his first collection, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892). He married Louise Hawkins after completing his M.D. in 1885. His medical practice was never financially successful. After the publication of his first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887), he gradually became able to earn a good living at writing, and he abandoned medical practice in 1891.

Though his Holmes tales earned for him fame and fortune, Doyle's dream was to become a great historical novelist like Sir Walter Scott. A prolific writer, Doyle continued to produce painstakingly researched and rendered historical romances, few of which found many readers. Doyle became frustrated as the stories he considered potboilers appeared in The Strand, a new popular magazine, and demand for more of them increased. He tried to "kill off" Holmes in "The Final Problem," but seven years later he was again writing about him.

Doyle's private career was nearly as eventful as Holmes's. He was twice a ship's medical officer. In the Boer War, he served under terrible conditions and without pay as a medical officer. His published defense of the British conduct of the war won for him knighthood. He interested himself in reform movements and twice ran unsuccessfully for Parliament. In 1897, he met and fell in love with Jean Leckie. He married her ten years later, after the death of his first wife from tuberculosis. With his first wife he had two children, with his second, three.

The loss of his first son, Kingsley, and several friends in World War I motivated Doyle to join the spiritualist movement, about which he wrote extensively. He continued to produce memorable fiction, not only Holmes stories but also an adventure series with Professor Challenger as the hero. The Lost World (1912) is the best-known novel in this series. Doyle died of heart disease at his home, Windlesham, in Crowborough, East Sussex, England, on July 7, 1930.

Analysis
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes stories mainly to earn money. He did not think of them as serious works of art and was somewhat dismayed at their success. He had apparently stumbled on a formula that would hold the readers of the new mass-circulation magazines that catered to urban readers educated in the public schools of the late nineteenth century. For much of his professional career he felt ambivalent about his creation. While a Holmes story (or later a play) was sure to bring income, Doyle really wanted to be writing in other, more respectable genres. While his Holmes stories were consciously artful, Doyle thought of them as "mere" fantasies, often privately expressing a disdain for them similar to that which Holmes expresses toward Watson's overly sensationalized narratives of his brilliant cases.

Many critics attribute Doyle's success in this series to his conceptions of Holmes, Watson, and their relationship. There are, in fact, central elements of the classic detective formula. Holmes is passionate about solving problems and about little else. For example, the only woman ever to earn much of his respect is Irene Adler, the beautiful songstress of "A Scandal in Bohemia" who outsmarts him when he attempts to steal an incriminating photograph from her. Yet his aloofness from ordinary life does not entirely exempt him from ordinary values. He cares touchingly for Watson and at least adequately for the innocent victims of crimes. He devotes his talents to the cause of justice, and he takes his country's part against all enemies. In contrast, his most dangerous adversaries possess Holmes's skills but use them solely for themselves. The most famous of these is Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime, who figures in several tales, but most vividly in "The Final Problem."

As in the case of trying to steal Irene Adler's photograph, Holmes is not above bending or even breaking the law, but he does so mainly in the service of higher levels of social order or justice. He will steal a photograph to preserve order in European ruling families. A killer may go unpunished if the murder seems justified, as in "The Abbey Grange." Although Holmes may stray from the letter of the law, he never violates its spirit.

Holmes battles crime for two reasons: to preserve order and for the sheer pleasure of solving challenging intellectual problems. Virtually every area of knowledge to which he has applied himself relates to solving crimes. He is credited with writing monographs on codes and ciphers, tattoos, tobacco ashes, marks of trades on hands, typewriters, footprints, the human ear, and many other highly specialized subjects. Among his eccentricities, perhaps only his devotion to the violin and to listening to music are not directly related to his work.

A Study in Scarlet
The learning Holmes cultivates serves his particular method of detection. This method is established in A Study in Scarlet, when Holmes says on meeting Watson for the first time, "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive." After considerable delay, Holmes explains how close observation of Watson's skin, appearance, and posture, combined with knowledge of current events led quickly and inevitably to his conclusion. Holmes cultivates close observation of relevant detail to form and verify hypotheses. That is the same general method C. Auguste Dupin describes when explaining how he managed to read his friend's mind in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." An incident of such observation and reasoning becomes part of the formula of a Holmes story. Holmes considers himself a scientific detective; for this reason he holds himself above the more ordinary human passions that might cloud his reasoning powers. His objectivity can make him seem callous. For example, in "The Dancing Men," he shows little concern for the victims and is more interested in the solution of the puzzle than in protecting those threatened.

This weakness in Holmes is counterbalanced in part by Watson. Holmes's interest in a case tends to end when the puzzle is solved and the culprit captured, but Watson's narratives often offer brief summaries of the subsequent lives of criminals and victims. Watson provides the more mundane human interest. As Cawelti and others have shown, the good doctor is the reader's representative in the story. Although he lacks Holmes's transcendent rational powers, Watson has all the endearing qualities of courage, energy, compassion, patriotism, and loyalty, as well as an ordinary intelligence. A kindly and admiring middle-class gentleman, Watson connects the reader to the strange and powerful genius of the detective. Furthermore, within the stories, Watson connects Holmes with the ordinary world, repeatedly calling attention to the human needs of other characters. While Holmes is the specialist in crime, Watson is the generalist, a well-rounded person, dependable when action is necessary but falling short in the art of detection.

One of Watson's most important functions is to conceal what goes on in Holmes's mind. Holmes is given the irritating but essential characteristic of refusing to reveal what he knows until he has completed his solution, sometimes waiting until the criminal is caught. Such concealment is essential to the dramatic power of the stories; it creates suspense and an eagerness to continue reading, and it allows the story to build toward the moment of surprising revelation of the criminal or the crime.

Though he developed them in unique ways, Doyle borrowed these elements from Poe: the detached and rational detective, the admiring and more prosaic companion, and the relationship between them that helps connect the reader with the detective while concealing the sleuth's thinking. Cawelti gives Doyle credit for discovering the full potential of the Watson type of narrator, thus using this sort of character to establish the classical detective genre. Doyle also borrowed the form of his plot from Poe. Cawelti points to six elements that have become conventional, though in varying order, in the plot of the classical detective tale: introduction of the detective, description of the crime, the investigation, the solution, the explanation of the solution, and the denouement. Doyle develops these elements into the modern formula that transforms what was present in Poe into a powerful popular genre.

The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902), perhaps the greatest of the Holmes tales, illustrates Doyle's deployment of these plot elements as well as the highest level of his artistic achievement in this series. Watson introduces Holmes's powers by means of a friendly competition that becomes an important structural and thematic element. Watson examines a walking stick left by a client and makes inferences about the client's identity, concluding that Dr. James Mortimer is a successful elderly country practitioner. Holmes notes that while Watson is partly correct, he is mostly wrong. Mortimer is a country doctor, but he is city trained, young, active, and unambitious, and he owns a dog. Holmes is careful to point out that Watson's errors helped him to find the truth. This pattern is repeated in the central portion of the novella, the investigation. This introduction of Holmes, Watson, and their relationship emphasizes the relative power of Holmes to get at the truth in tangled and fragmentary evidence. Watson's attempt is well-done and intelligent, but it cannot match Holmes's observation and reasoning. This difference becomes much more important thematically when the duo is trying to prevent a murder.

Doyle artfully handles the description of the crime. Mortimer presents three accounts of events that set up an opposition between supernatural and natural explanations of the recent death of Sir Charles Baskerville at Dartmoor, his Devon estate. The first is a document telling how a remorseless ancestor brought a curse on the Baskervilles in the shape of a hound from Hell that kills those who venture on Dartmoor with evil in their hearts. The second is a newspaper account of the inquest into Sir Charles's death. The coroner concluded that he died of his weak heart while on an evening stroll, but Mortimer has noted details of the scene he investigated that suggest foul play. Sir Charles's behavior was unusual, and there was at least one footprint of a gigantic dog at the scene. Mortimer has come to Holmes to ask what should be done to protect the new heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, soon to arrive from Canada. After illustrating Holmes's incredible powers, Doyle presents him with a problem that may be beyond those powers: dealing with a supernatural agent.

One consequence of Doyle's development of the potential of Watson as a character narrator is the extension of the investigation section of the story. As it becomes possible to extend this section in an interesting manner, the story can become longer. In A Study in Scarlet and in his later novella, The Valley of Fear (1914), as well as in several stories, Doyle stretches the narrative by interpolating long adventures from the past that explain the more recent crime. Though such attempts seem clumsy, they point toward the more sophisticated handling of similar materials by writers such as Ross Macdonald and P. D. James. In The Hound of the Baskervilles Doyle prolongs the story while exploiting the gothic aspect of his theme by making Watson the investigator.

After several clues and mysteries develop in London, Holmes sends Watson with Mortimer and Sir Henry to Dartmoor. The brief London investigation sets up another theme indicative of Doyle's art. The man who shadows Sir Henry proves to be a worthy adversary of Holmes, using an effective disguise and successfully evading Holmes's attempts to trace him. On his departure, this suspect names himself Sherlock Holmes. This doubling of Holmes and his adversary continues throughout the tale.

At Dartmoor, Watson studies the few local residents and encounters a number of mysteries. His investigation successfully eliminates the servants as suspects and discovers the secret relationship between them and Selden, an escaped convict in hiding on the moor. On the whole, however, Watson is bewildered by the mysteries. The moor becomes a symbolic setting; Watson often reflects that the landscape of the moor, with its person-swallowing muck, mirrors the danger and impenetrability of the mystery. Though he can see and understand much of what happens, he cannot fit together all the pieces. The only master of the landscape appears to be Mr. Stapleton, a naturalist who has come to know the area in his pursuit of butterflies.

Holmes, however, has also mastered the moor by studying maps and, without Watson's knowledge, hiding on the moor to investigate the situation secretly. Almost as soon as Watson learns of Holmes's presence, the rival masters of the landscape prove to be rivals in crime as well, for Holmes has concluded that Stapleton is the man responsible for Sir Charles's death and for the attempt on Sir Henry that the two sleuths witness that evening. Within a day of Holmes's arrival, the whole crime has been solved. Holmes learns that Stapleton is really a lost Baskerville relative who can claim the inheritance when Sir Henry dies, and he learns how Stapleton tricked a woman into luring Sir Charles outside at night, where he could be frightened to death.

Doyle creates a characteristic sensation by having Holmes suddenly appear on the scene and show that he has effectively mastered the situation. The gothic mystery and ambiguity of the moor pushes men of common sense such as Sir Henry and Watson toward half belief in the supernatural, toward confusion and irrational fear. Like a gothic villain, Stapleton feeds these weaknesses, using his superior intelligence and the power of his knowledge of the landscape. Only Stapleton's good double, Holmes, can understand and thus resist this power. Even Holmes has difficulty, though, when the moor seems to help Stapleton (a dense fog develops on the night of the capture), and Stapleton succeeds in surprising the generally unflappable Holmes. Stapleton does this by smearing glowing phosphorus on his killer hound's muzzle to give it the supernatural appearance of a hound from Hell. The sleuths are surprised that the dog is able to attack Sir Henry before they can shoot it.

Both the fog and the dog work against Stapleton finally, showing that nature is, in reality, a neutral force in human affairs, as it must be if Holmes's scientific art is to triumph in finding the truth and bringing justice. Stapleton's wife, an unwilling accomplice, finally rebels against using the hound to kill and reveals Stapleton's hiding place. Stapleton apparently loses his way in the fog and sinks into the mire.

In this novel, the explanation of the crime coincides on the whole with its solution. These are the most important and dramatic parts of a classical detective story because they satisfy both the reader's anxiety for the fates of the possible victims and the reader's desire to understand the mystery. Bringing them together as Doyle does produces a sensational and dramatic effect appropriate to a detective story with a gothic setting and gothic themes.

The denouement belongs partly to Holmes and partly to Watson. Watson deals with the human interest, explaining something of the fates of the important characters. Holmes clears up a few remaining mysterious details, including the one clue that led him from the first to suspect the Stapletons, the brand of perfume that so slightly emanated from the anonymous warning note they received in London at the beginning of the case.

The Hound of the Baskervilles illustrates Doyle's more important contributions to the familiar conventions of the classic detective story. His invention and exploitation of the relationship between Holmes and Watson enable him to engage the reader more deeply in the human interest as well as in the intellectual problem of the tale. Furthermore, the relationship enables Doyle to extend the investigation portion of the plot, forging an effective structure for longer tales.

One element of Doyle's art in these tales that ought not to go unmentioned is his wit and humor, of which this novel offers many examples, not the least of which is Holmes's successful deducing of the breed of Mortimer's dog by observing it from his Baker Street window. The thematic oppositions Doyle establishes between Watson and Holmes, the natural and the supernatural, and Holmes and Stapleton are evidence of Doyle's art as well. Doyle knowingly develops these oppositions within his gothic setting, making a symbolic landscape of the moor and creating ambiguous images of nets, tangles, and the detective himself to underscore what Cawelti has identified as the central thematic content of the classical detective genre.

According to Cawelti, one characteristic of the classic formula is that the frightening power of the gothic villain is brought under control and used for the benefit of society. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, that struggle for control is directly reflected in the doubling of Stapleton and Holmes, as it was in the earlier Holmes works through the doubling of Moriarty and Holmes. Furthermore, Cawelti observes that classic detective fiction addresses the issue of middle-class guilt over repressed sexuality and aggression and over exploitation of the lower classes. The detective rescues ordinary characters from irrational fear and superstition and discovers that one person, a criminal or outsider, is the real enemy. This pattern of removing generalized guilt and pinning it onto an outsider is clear in The Hound of the Baskervilles—even though the victim has a title. Sir Henry, a modest Canadian farmer suddenly elevated in status by his uncle's death, intends to benefit his community with his new fortune. Stapleton's opposition threatens to frustrate this noble purpose and to turn the power of the estate toward the pure selfishness of the originally cursed ancestor; he would reinstate the old, evil aristocracy at the expense of the new, socially responsible aristocracy toward which the middle class aspires.

Doyle's achievements in the Sherlock Holmes series include creating memorable characters and stories that have remained popular throughout the twentieth century, expanding the classic detective formula invented by Poe into an effective popular genre, and bringing considerable literary art to a form he himself thought subliterary.

Terry Heller

Principal Mystery and Detective Fiction

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson series
A Study in Scarlet, 1887 (serial; 1888, book); The Sign of Four, 1890 (also known as The Sign of the Four); The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892; The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894; The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1901-1902 (serial; 1902, book); The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905; The Valley of Fear, 1914-1915 (serial; 1915, book); His Last Bow, 1917; The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, 1927; The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1981 (revised and expanded 2001)

Nonseries Novels
The Mystery of Cloomber, 1888; The Surgeon of Gaster Fell, 1895

Other Short Fiction
Mysteries and Adventures, 1889 (also known as The Gully of Bluemansdyke, and Other Stories); The Captain of Polestar, and Other Tales, 1890; My Friend the Murderer, and Other Mysteries and Adventures, 1893; The Great Keinplatz Experiment, and Other Stories, 1894; An Actor's Duel, and the Winning Shot, 1894 (with Campbell Rae Brown); Round the Red Lamp: Being Fact and Fancies of Medical Life, 1894; The Green Flag, and Other Stories of War and Sport, 1900; The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales, 1911; Danger! and Other Stories, 1918; Tales of the Ring and Camp, 1922 (also known as The Croxley Master, and Other Tales of the Ring and Camp); Tales of Terror and Mystery, 1922 (also known as The Black Doctor, and Other Tales of Terror and Mystery); Tales of Twilight and the Unseen, 1922 (also known as The Great Keinplatz Experiment, and Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen)

Other Major Works

Novels
Micah Clarke, 1889; The Firm of Girdlestone, 1889; Beyond the City, 1891; The Doings of Raffles Haw, 1891; The White Company, 1891; The Great Shadow, 1892; The Refugees, 1893; The Parasite, 1894; The Stark Munro Letters, 1895; Rodney Stone, 1896; The Tragedy of the Koroska, 1897 (also known as A Desert Drama); Uncle Bernac, 1897; A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus, 1899 (revised 1910); Sir Nigel, 1905-1906 (serial; 1906, book); The Lost World, 1912; The Poison Belt, 1913; The Land of Mist, 1926

Short Fiction
The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, 1896; The Man from Archangel, and Other Stories, 1898; The Adventures of Gerard, 1903; Round the Fire Stories, 1908; One Crowded Hour, 1911; Three of Them, 1923; Last of the Legions, and Other Tales of Long Ago, 1925; The Dealings of Captain Sharkey, and Other Tales of Pirates, 1925; The Maracot Deep, and Other Stories, 1929; Uncollected Stories: The Unknown Conan Doyle, 1982

Plays
Foreign Policy, pr. 1893; Jane Annie: Or, The Good Conduct Prize, pr., pb. 1893 (with J. M. Barrie); Waterloo, pr. 1894 (also known as A Story of Waterloo); Halves, pr. 1899; Sherlock Holmes, pr. 1899 (with William Gillette); A Duet, pb. 1903; Brigadier Gerard, pr. 1906; The Fires of Fate, pr. 1909; The House of Temperley, pr. 1909; The Pot of Caviare, pr. 1910; The Speckled Band, pr. 1910; The Crown Diamond, pr. 1921; Exile: A Drama of Christmas Eve, pb. 1925; It's Time Something Happened, pb. 1925

Poetry
Songs of Action, 1898; Songs of the Road, 1911; The Guards Came Through, and Other Poems, 1919; The Poems: Collected Edition, 1922

Nonfiction
1900-1910 The Great Boer War, 1900; The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct, 1902; The Case of Mr. George Edalji, 1907; Through the Magic Door, 1907; The Crime of the Congo, 1909

1911-1920 The Case of Oscar Slater, 1912; Great Britain and the Next War, 1914; In Quest of Truth, Being a Correspondence Between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Captain H. Stansbury, 1914; To Arms!, 1914; The German War: Some Sidelights and Reflections, 1915; Western Wanderings, 1915; A Visit to Three Fronts, 1916; The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1916-1919 (6 volumes); The Origin and Outbreak of the War, 1916; A Petition to the Prime Minister on Behalf of Roger Casement, 1916(?); The New Revelation, 1918; The Vital Message, 1919; A Debate on Spiritualism, 1920 (with Joseph McCabe); Our Reply to the Cleric, 1920; Spiritualism and Rationalism, 1920

1921-1984 Fairies Photographed, 1921; The Evidence for Fairies, 1921; The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, 1921; The Case for Spirit Photography, 1922 (with others); The Coming of the Fairies, 1922; Our American Adventure, 1923; Memories and Adventures, 1924; Our Second American Adventure, 1924; Psychic Experiences, 1925; The Early Christian Church and Modern Spiritualism, 1925; The History of Spiritualism, 1926 (2 volumes); Pheneas Speaks: Direct Spirit Communications, 1927; A Word of Warning, 1928; What Does Spiritualism Actually Teach and Stand For?, 1928; An Open Letter to Those of My Generation, 1929; Our African Winter, 1929; The Roman Catholic Church: A Rejoinder, 1929; The Edge of the Unknown, 1930; Arthur Conan Doyle on Sherlock Holmes, 1981; Essays on Photography, 1982; Letters to the Press, 1984

Edited Texts
Dreamland and Ghostland, 1886; D. D. Home: His Life and Mission, 1921 (by Mrs. Douglas Home); The Spiritualist's Reader, 1924

Translation
The Mystery of Joan of Arc, 1924 (Léon Denis)

Miscellaneous
The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader, 2002

Bibliography Akinson, Michael. The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes, and Other Eccentric Readings. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Attempts to read Holmes's stories in the manner in which Holmes himself might read them. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is read in terms of the philosophy of Kundalini yoga; "A Scandal in Bohemia" is read in terms of its use of traditional romance motifs and its debt to Edgar Allan Poe; Jungian psychology is used to read A Study in Scarlet; and Derridian deconstruction is used to read "The Adventure of the Copper Breeches."

Barsham, Diana. Arthur Conan Doyle and the Meaning of Masculinity. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. A discussion of masculinity according to Doyle, delving into all Doyle's writings, including his war correspondence and travel writings.

Day, Barry, ed. Sherlock Holmes in His Own Words and in the Words of Those Who Knew Him. Taylor, 2003. Day has culled details of Holmes's life from passages in the stories and arranged them into an entertaining biography.

Fido, Martin. The World of Sherlock Holmes: The Facts and Fiction Behind the World's Greatest Detective. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Media, 1998. An entry in the "World of" series, this study of Holmes reveals the distinctive, fictional London in which the detective lives and works.

Hodgson, John A., ed. Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Contemporary Critical Essays. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Includes nine essays on Holmes, from a variety of critical perspectives, including feminist, deconstruction, and discourse analysis approaches.

Jaffee, Jacqueline A. Arthur Conan Doyle. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Jaffee's solid work combines biography and a critical discussion of Doyle's stories and novels. Contains three chapters on the Sherlock Holmes stories, which closely examine the tales. Supplemented by an index, a bibliography of Doyle's work, and an annotated bibliography.

Jann, Rosemary. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Detecting Social Order. New York: Twayne, 1995. Part of Twayne's Masterwork Series, this slim volume is divided into two parts, the first of which places the great detective in a literary and historical context, followed by Jann's own reading of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlockian approach to detective fiction. In addition to a selected bibliography, Jann's book includes a brief chronology of Doyle's life and work.

Orel, Harold, ed. Critical Essays on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992. Including both evaluations by Doyle's contemporaries and later scholarship—some of it commissioned specifically for inclusion in this collection—Critical Essays is divided into three sections: "Sherlock Holmes," "Other Writings," and "Spiritualism." Harold Orel opens the collections with a lengthy and comprehensive essay, which is followed by a clever and classic meditation by Dorothy L. Sayers on "Dr. Watson's Christian Name."

Press, Charles. Looking over Sir Arthur's Shoulder: How Conan Doyle Turned the Trick. Shelburne, Ont.: Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2004. Study of Doyle as stylist, seeking to explain exactly what features of his writing account for its massive popularity.

Ross, Thomas Wynne. Good Old Index: The Sherlock Holmes Handbook, a Guide to the Sherlock Holmes Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Persons, Places, Themes, Summaries of all the Tales, with Commentary on the Style of the Author. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1997. An excellent manual for followers of Doyle's Holmes stories.