Where to Start with Arthur Conan Doyle: A Reading Guide

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) created the most famous fictional detective in the world — and one of the most famous fictional characters in any genre. Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective of 221B Baker Street, with his deductive reasoning, his cocaine habit, his Stradivarius, and his encyclopaedic but selective knowledge, has been portrayed on screen more often than any other fictional character in history, and the stories Doyle wrote about him set the template for detective fiction as it has been practised for 130 years. Doyle himself was ambivalent about his creation — he twice tried to kill Holmes off, once famously failing — but the stories remain endlessly readable, the character permanently compelling.

Where to Start: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

The essential entry point — the first and finest of the Sherlock Holmes short story collections, containing twelve cases that include some of the best detective stories ever written. ‘A Scandal in Bohemia,’ in which Holmes is outmanoeuvred by the opera singer Irene Adler, establishes immediately that Holmes can be defeated. ‘The Red-Headed League’ has the most brilliant and absurd premise in the canon. ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ — a locked manor, a dying woman’s last words, a villain with a swamp adder — is the story most often cited as the single finest. ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ has the warmth of a Christmas story with the pleasure of a perfect puzzle.

The short story form suits Holmes perfectly: each case is self-contained, each displays the method and the character, and the pacing is flawless.

A Study in Scarlet (1887)

The first Holmes story — the novel in which Watson and Holmes meet, 221B Baker Street is established, and the method is introduced for the first time. Watson, returning from Afghanistan with a wound in his shoulder and a wound in his psyche, meets Holmes through a mutual acquaintance and agrees to share rooms. A murder in Brixton gives Holmes his first case and Watson his first experience of the detective’s remarkable reasoning.

The novel is historically important — without it, nothing that follows exists — but it is not Doyle at his best. The long Utah flashback interrupts the London mystery awkwardly, and the story collection Adventures is better as an introduction. Read A Study in Scarlet for completeness, or read it last, as an origin story that the later work has made you eager for.

The Sign of Four (1890)

The second Holmes novel — more atmospheric and more romantic than A Study in Scarlet, opening with the famous scene in which Holmes, bored between cases, is injecting cocaine when Watson arrives with a client: Mary Morstan, whose father disappeared a decade ago and who has been receiving, anonymously, one large pearl per year. The mystery involves a stolen treasure, the Andaman Islands, and a murder by blowgun — Gothic and exotic in a way characteristic of the Victorian adventure story — and the case ends with Watson’s engagement to Mary Morstan.

More unified in structure than the first novel; excellent for readers who want the romance and adventure of the Holmes stories along with the detection.

The Valley of Fear (1915)

The last Holmes novel — and, for many readers, the most accomplished of the four. A cipher from Moriarty’s organisation warns Holmes of an imminent murder in a Sussex manor; the subsequent investigation involves a locked-room element of Agatha Christie-level ingenuity. The novel also splits into two halves (a pattern from A Study in Scarlet), but the American backstory — set in the coalfields of Pennsylvania, involving a secret criminal society — is more successfully integrated and more dramatically compelling than the Utah section of the first novel.

A satisfying read for Holmes enthusiasts who have worked through the short-story collections.

Reading Arthur Conan Doyle

The Holmes stories are among the most purely pleasurable reading in any language — not demanding, not difficult, but consistently ingenious, consistently atmospheric, and driven by a character whose combination of intellectual arrogance, genuine brilliance, and occasional kindness has remained compelling for 130 years. Begin with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for the most immediately satisfying introduction; read A Study in Scarlet to understand where everything began; read the subsequent story collections in publication order. The novels are best approached after the stories.