Tag: John Watson

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes villains from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the greatest villain. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Villains

The Holmes Villains

When considering the magnitude of Holmes villains, this reader feels that it would be inappropriate to make judgments based solely on the miscreants’ behavior and psychology.  The reason for this is that, since the Holmes stories were published, some villains have been referenced and adapted far more than others, with the result that their status in society has grown disproportionately to their crimes.  That said, it also feels inappropriate to judge the villains based upon my perception of their popular renown.  What, then, is the correct blend of popularity and debasement to scale my rankings upon?  I believe that the solution must more heavily weight a character’s deeds and mind, while still taking into account the characters’ fame.  Let us compare, for example, Vincent Spaulding and Killer Evans, two villains who are being selected because the circumstances of their crimes are quite similar. 

Both Spaulding and Killer Evans seek to gain something by deceiving the owner of an establishment with an elaborate scheme.  In Spaulding’s case, he invents The Red-Headed League as a ruse to get to the bank; in Killer Evans’ case, he creates the inheritance scheme of the three Garridebs to retrieve Prescott’s counterfeiting equipment.  Both are caught red-handed.  One’s story, The Red-Headed League, is widely considered better than the other’s, and certainly the collections that the characters come from (The Adventures for Spaulding and The Case-Book for Killer Evans) are widely thought to be disparate in quality.  The Adventures is lauded; The Case-Book is uneven.  So thanks to the earlier publication of The Red-Headed League, to the superior quality of The Red-headed League,and to higher quality of The Adventures as compared to The Case-Book, Spaulding has become the more famous of the two villains.  Yet it is Killer Evans who shoots Watson, while Spaulding does no harm to his captors.  Which of these deserves to be the villain with the higher order of magnitude?  Certainly there are arguments for Spaulding, namely his fame and adaptability, but—though Killer Evans is popularly overlooked—in this ranking, he might place more highly as a worse villain than Spaulding, because Evans shot Watson.  That said, although Spaulding has never hurt anyone so far as the readers know, he is so renowned, and his story is so widely read, he cannot fall so far down the rankings list as Mr. John Browner, whom we never meet, who acts in jealous rage (rather than with the calculating concern of Vincent Spaulding), and who derives from a more or less mediocre story.  So Spaulding will rank higher than Browner, despite the fact that Mr. John Browner’s actions are hideous, nearly beyond the pale.  All this is to exemplify how, in ranking the villains, I shall weigh the monstrosity of a villain’s action, but I shall not ignore the quality of the story that the character inhabits nor the renown that the character has won since the time of the story’s publication. 

Now, in weighing the actions, I will give greater consideration to characters who are Machiavellian and artful, rather than those who are vulgar and artless.  I feel also more predisposed to rank more highly those villains whose work we actually see being done.  If the character’s misdeeds are done solely off the page, the characters’ ‘villainousness’ cannot increase as greatly in my mind as compared to the villainy of those characters whose work we see played out before us.  And, I intend to consider the villains’ victims.  The more vulnerable the victim, the worse the villain, e.g.: children will be considered more vulnerable than a bank, and so villains who put children at risk shall be considered worse. 

Finally, this ranking is not meant to have the rigor of science.  My own ranking of villains may differ greatly from any other reader’s (although I have never seen another ranking of Holmes villains, and I believe that mine is the first).  My rankings have my own preferences and biases built into them, which I believe is perfectly acceptable because we are talking of literature, a form of art, and there is no empirical way to rank Holmes villains.  That said, I will try to remain true to what I feel is the spirit of the task, and I shall do my best to avoid (for instance) obvious blunders like ranking Isadora Klein ahead of Professor Moriarty. That said, off we go.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

1. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (January 1892, Adventures)

The Christmas story.  A beloved tale whose ranking is all out of proportion with its mystery, but whose ranking, for me, is just right all the same.  When I was young, I loved reading about the Holmes’ analysis of the hat, and I always loved the detail of the lime cream.  I was fascinated by the bonny blue stone in the crop of the goose, and I was enchanted by the breakfast scene.  The Blue Carbuncle is, to me, the most lovable, re-readable, and cozy story in the canon.  On a cold winter’s night, when the house is quiet, and snow muffles the street noise, when candles are lit and the pets are asleep and I am interested in treating myself to a Holmesian delicacy, this is the story that I turn to.  For me, there is no better measure of a story’s worth than that.  Few other stories occupy such a place for me, and all are those that I consider my favorites.  They are: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Kidnapped, John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Roald Dahl’s The BFG and Danny the Champion of the World, P.G. Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves! and The Code of the Woosters, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game.  Hundreds of other books and stories are close to my heart, such as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October; Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello; Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game.  I could nearly go on forever.  There are too many well-told, good stories to name.  (How could I have left Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol off my list?  I really must stop somewhere…)  I feel some need of defending The Blue Carbuncle as my favorite, but, on reflection, I really oughtn’t.  This is, after all, my list, and I do not intend to push my beliefs on anyone.  If you like another story better, then I am happy for you, and I say Live and let live.  Blue Carbuncle is my favorite, but it certainly does not have to be yours too.  For me, this is an original story (the idea of concealing a stone in a goose is a brilliant one!), and the atmosphere and telling of it are impeccable, as fine as a Christmas dinner.  The story manages to engage and elevate all that is Victorian and Christmassy, to wrap it into a neat gift, and to give it without asking anything back.  Giving without expectation of receiving is the true Christmas spirit, and for many years I have found a great and merry gift, with nothing expected in return, in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

2.  The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (April 1904, Return)

Perhaps (even more than Moriarty) the most contemptible of all Holmes villains, Charles Augustus Milverton takes center stage in this appropriately eponymous story.  Doyle’s description of Milverton is so memorable as to make it worth repeating here.  First described in association with snakes: a “slithery, gliding, venomous creature,” Milverton is then cast as the “king of all blackmailers” and a man with “a smiling face and a heart of marble.”  Once he enters Baker Street, Milverton appears as “a man of fifty, with a large, intellectual head, a round, plump, hairless face, a perpetual frozen smile, and two keen grey eyes, which gleamed brightly from behind broad, golden-rimmed glasses. There was something of Mr. Pickwick’s benevolence in his appearance, marred only by the insincerity of the fixed smile and by the hard glitter of those restless and penetrating eyes.”  Milverton is diabolical evil incarnate, with an oily smile and a gun beneath his luxurious coat; he is the iron beneath the velvet glove; he is HBO’s Penguin: an amoral man, out only for himself, one who will stick at nothing.  Our vision of Milverton, as readers, is only improved and cemented by Sidney Paget’s masterful depiction.  There we see Milverton—hat in hand like a supplicant, deceitfully benevolent smile upon his face, the rich astrakhan over his shoulders—and we can hate him, for, as Holmes says, this is a man who cripples people’s lives “to add to his already swollen money-bags.”

There is less mystery in this case than in most, but the tale is unlike any other in the Holmes canon.  It is truly an adventure, one in which Holmes and Watson are in the moral right in burgling Milverton’s home.  (One only wishes that the poor maid’s heart didn’t have to get broken in the process, but one cannot make omelets without breaking a few eggs.)  The quibble I have with this story is with the presumptive husbands of the women whom Milverton is blackmailing.  I put myself into these men’s shoes.  If I were to receive a letter from a man like Milverton, of course I would be angry, and I would confront my wife about it.  She, likely upset, would explain to me how she was blackmailed by this man, whose name, Charles Augustus, would then be burned into my brain.  My anger would turn on him.  How dare this Milverton extort and blackmail the love of my life!  How dare he think that I would do nothing?  How dare he think that I would behave so single-mindedly as to have no notion of revenge toward Milverton himself?  Leaving things to simmer with my wife, I would track down that low and cowardly Milverton, and I would… Well, better not to say, but suffice it to say that there are other men in this world who, understanding the position, would act the same.  It is hard, therefore, to think that no man had revenged himself upon Milverton before, and thereby put an early stop to his dastardly scheming. 

That said, the plot is a great one, and the writing is superb.  I have always enjoyed the story, and I find that it’s one that I often go to when I’m looking for a good Holmes adventure to read before bedtime.  For its re-readability, its precipitating prose, its uniqueness, and for the sheer magnitude of the villain, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton is one of Doyle’s best.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

3.  The Adventure of the Abbey Grange (September 1904, Return)

“The game is afoot.”  With these words that have echoed for a century, and with the less-often repeated descriptions preceding it, i.e.: “It was a bitterly cold and frosty morning” and “The candle in his hand shone on his eager, stooping face” one of the greatest stories in the Holmes canon begins.  The Adventure of the Abbey Grange is most notable, of course, for Holmes’ having to return to the scene of the crime, by his climbing on to the fireplace mantel to examine the bellrope, by his vexation over the beeswax in the wine glasses, and, finally, by his and Watson’s ad hoc trial of Captain Croker.  Yet Abbey Grange is also notable for its little details: the blackthorn cudgel that Sir Eustace carries, the ingenuity of the story so quickly concocted by Croker and the maid, and for the clever trick of throwing the silver into the icy pond where the swan resides.  Finally, the story is remarkable for its appropriate administration of justice: sure, swift, and popular: vox populi, vox Dei.

Sir Eustace Brackenstall is a hound, and though he has not traditionally been catalogued as a villain like Moriarty or Colonel Sebastian Moran, he is as bad as they are.  This is a man who drenches a dog in petroleum and sets it on fire; this is a man who beats his wife, calls her names, and stabs her with hat pins; this is a man who throws decanters at the maid.  This is the sort of man, with his title and his wealth, who was protected by contemporary British law and culture more than anyone save a peer of the realm or the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Sir Eustace could act with impunity, and he did, abusing his household and his station.  With this context firmly in mind, Holmes waits outside Scotland Yard with his brows furrowed, thinking the situation carefully over, before deciding that he wants more information before prosecuting Croker.  Therefore, Holmes meets with Captain Croker, and he asks the captain to tell his story.  Holmes tests Croker, finds his character rings true to the standards of good morality, and then sets him free.  As to Croker’s conduct, I feel the same about it as Squire Trelawny, of Treasure Island, felt when he spoke to Mr. Dance about the death of the pirate, Pew: “And as for riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach.”  Good riddance to a bad egg.

The story reaches, perhaps, its pinnacle when Holmes steps off the train for Chiselhurst and pulls Watson after him.  Holmes says that the case feels wrong, all wrong, and that he cannot bear to leave it in the condition that it’s in.  He says that he fears that the British jury have not yet reached the “pitch of intelligence” necessary to side with his theories over Lestrade’s facts.  He says that, if only he had examined the case de novo, without being influenced by the lady’s story, then he would have never come to the conclusion that the lady’s story was true.  And, after a scintillating investigation, Holmes returns to Lady Brackenstall with one of his most dramatic pronouncements, “No, no, Lady Brackenstall, it is no use. You may have heard of any little reputation which I possess. I will stake it all on the fact that your story is an absolute fabrication.”  The maid calls Holmes “impudent,” surely out of line for her station, and Holmes does not deign to answer her, for he knows that the truth is on his side.  When the lady of the house still refuses to be forthcoming, Holmes takes matters into his own hands, visits the shipping office, and sends for Croker. 

Thus between lowborn sailors and highborn blackguards, quick deception and careful illumination, swift retribution and extrajudicial justice, exhilarating exposition and invigorating dialogue, The Adventure of the Abbey Grange nestles down, like slowly sinking bees-wing, in the top tier of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

4. The Adventure of the Second Stain (December 1904, The Return)

The last story in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and the story which vies with His Last Bow for featuring the best last line in the canon (“‘We also have our diplomatic secrets,’ said he, and picking up his hat he turned to the door.”), The Adventure of the Second Stain ranks highly for a number of reasons.  In the first place, the mystery puzzles Holmes tremendously.  He strains his capabilities to the utmost, yet midway through the story, he remains flummoxed.  In the second place, the solution to the mystery (and Holmes’ handling of the solution) are both brilliantly handled by Doyle.  Finally, in this well-written story, the stakes are high.  This is a story of international intrigue; the fate of the nation hangs in the balance, and Holmes holds the scales. 

The story begins with Doyle (in the guise of Watson, of course) trying again to distance himself from Holmes.  Doyle had killed off the famous detective already, and now Doyle says that he intended Abbey Grange to be the last of Holmes’ mysteries, not because of lack of material or waning public interest, but because of the reluctance that Holmes shows to the continued publication of his experiences.  Doyle then goes on to say that Holmes has retired and has taken up bee farming in Sussex (one is reminded of le Carré in Tinker when le Carré writes that the detective, Mendel, considered bees from outside Surrey to be ‘exotic,’ and one wonders whether there’s some profound, un-mined relationship between mystery writers, their detectives, and bees).  Doyle then notes that Holmes has made a request for privacy from the public, and that Holmes hopes that his “wishes in this matter in this matter should be strictly observed.”  The public, of course, will not be satisfied by such requests; Holmes’ wishes are not observed, and Doyle, like Dr. Frankenstein, finds that he cannot escape from his creation. 

So we go in to the story, which it seems that Doyle hopes is Holmes’ last, but that time proves isn’t.  The Second Stain begins—as other stories do in which valuables go missing—with Doyle using a clever tactic to skirt around the rather technically difficult idea that a safe has been broken into.  Doyle’s characters simply refuse to leave a valuable item in a safe: a perfectly functional safe was left unused in Beryl Coronet with disastrous consequences; a working safe is unexploited here as well, and once more the characters are left with a catastrophe.  In this case, Mr. Trelawny Hope states without irony that the document “was of such importance that I have never left it in my safe,” and Mr. Hope then leaves the paper unattended in his room for four hours.  The Prime Minister then praises Mr. Hope for his sense of public duty, and tells Hope, very kindly, and certainly falsely, that, “No one can blame you. There is no precaution which you have neglected.” 

Readers then learn that all the cabinet ministers know of the secret document, as well as departmental officials.  Applying the rule from Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for the Red October that “The likelihood of a secret’s being blown is proportional to the square of the number of people who’re in on it,” Holmes must be thinking that dozens of people already know about the potentate’s letter, and he advises the two diplomats accordingly.

“Holmes shook his head mournfully.  ‘You think, sir, that unless this document is recovered there will be war?’

‘I think it is very probable.’

‘Then, sir, prepare for war.’

‘That is a hard saying, Mr. Holmes.’”

Holmes is under no illusion with regard to the difficulty of the task ahead of him; he believes that the paper is already gone: “The situation is desperate, but not hopeless. Even now, if we could be sure which of them has taken it, it is just possible that it has not yet passed out of his hands. After all, it is a question of money with these fellows, and I have the British Treasury behind me. If it’s on the market I’ll buy it—if it means another penny on the income-tax.”  And so Holmes sets out. 

He goes to Godolphin St. where Lucas has just been murdered, a trivial event compared with the loss of the letter, but one which Holmes feels is certainly connected to that letter’s disappearance.  But try as Holmes might to find the letter, he finds nothing, and that, he reasons, is cause for hope.  Of this inaction, Holmes says, “Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that nothing has happened.”  Indeed he is correct, and this is just one example of many artfully written lines in the story.  Another wonderful line, for instance, is delivered when Trelawny Hope finds the letter in the despatch box.  “‘Mr. Holmes, you are a wizard, a sorcerer!’ he cries.  ‘How did you know it was there?’” 

‘Because I knew it was nowhere else.’”

The answer from Holmes rings so satisfactorily to our ears because, above all else, his words are decidedly true.  He did indeed know that the letter was nowhere else, because he and Lady Hilda had returned the letter to the despatch-box.  And the following commentary from the Prime Minister shows Doyle’s readership that (unlike modern day television advertisers, who, for inane, specious, and maddening reasons insist on portraying every average American like he or she is a silly fool) Doyle respects his secondary characters.  The Prime Minister is not, even for an instant, fooled by Holmes’ clever tactic, and he knows that “there is more than meets the eye.”  Not for the first time do Doyle’s lesser characters receive the benefit of kindly ink.  Arthur Holder, Mrs. St. Clair, Miss Violet Hunter, Ronald Adair, Grant Munro, and many others are presented to us by Conan Doyle as everyday citizens with common sense, decency, and reason.  The effect of populating his stories with such sympathetic characters is to make readers who share those characters’ traits—common sense, decency, and reason—feel kinship to their fictional brethren.  It is quite easy to like those whom we can relate to, and there are many, many characters in the Doyle canon whom we can feel immediately familiar with.  In this story whose dialogue and mystery have rarely been surpassed by any other literary work, readers may find that The Adventure of the Second Stain is one of Doyle’s very best.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

The First Tier: The Crown Jewels

These are the stories that, more often than not, I turn to when I am looking for a Holmes story at bedtime.  Like the stories in the second tier, the five stories in this one are stories that I have loved ever since I first read them.  These “crown jewels” give me a sense of total contentment on a cold winter’s night when I am cozying up with a familiar story.  I enjoy reading them, again and again, and, as if they have drunk from the fountain of youth, they never seem to get old.

5.  The Norwood Builder (November 1903, Return)

I never cease to be amused by the passage in The Norwood Builder in which Holmes is gratified by the prospect of a devilish mystery, even one that threatens to put his prospective client’s neck in the noose: 

“‘Arrest you!’ said Holmes. ‘This is really most grati—most interesting. On what charge do you expect to be arrested?’

“‘Upon the charge of murdering Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood.’

“My companion’s expressive face showed a sympathy which was not, I am afraid, entirely unmixed with satisfaction.”

Holmes, who loves a case as the artist loves art for art’s sake, has been bored nearly to death by the dearth of cases, so, when a fascinating mystery regarding the ostensible murder of the vengeful and reclusive Jonas Oldacre crops up, he’s delighted.  In this charming mystery, we have a case in which Holmes’ spirit rises in rebellion against the very idea that John McFarlane is culpable for the murder of Oldacre, but Holmes cannot prove it.  It is only when Oldacre, in a final attempt to assure blame for McFarlane, overextends himself, that Holmes is able to satisfy himself that something is definitely amiss in the case.  After Holmes finds that one passage in the house is shorter than the others, then Holmes, quite literally and very dramatically, smokes his quarry out. 

Norwood Builder is a case that bears multiple readings, and each time it is re-read, it enriches the reader anew.  The secret passage/hidden room trope is one that Doyle is careful not to overuse, and here he employs it with great effect.  Time and again, as readers peruse this story, we are satisfied to see the cunning and devilish Oldacre spring from his hiding place as the cry of fire echoes through the house and as the smoke rises.  What a treacherous old fiend Oldacre is!  What a monster!  Part of what makes Norwood Builder so good is the incredible vindictiveness of Oldacre himself.  For years the old miser (who reminds me of Ebeneezer Balfour in Kidnapped)has nursed a grudge against the woman who jilted him, and he finally, like a snake, lashes out at poor McFarlane, who is quite innocent of all the turmoil that transpired to bring about this grotesque state of affairs.  That Oldacre would go so far as to pretend to bring about his own death, secret himself in a hidden room, and then—as he seeks to escape his looming creditors—frame an innocent man for his murder is a truly heinous act.  The action makes him, at once, one of Doyle’s most fascinating and eyebrow-raising villains, mostly because there is no doubt that such people exist in real life.  And what’s most frightening is that such spiteful people may not be so rare as to only be someone else’s problem.  Many of us know an Oldacre personality type, and, what’s more, many of us might not put it past that person to try a stunt equivalent to what Oldacre himself has attempted.  And, it almost goes without saying, but, as soon as the Oldacre-personality type is caught, their reaction is just as Doyle portrays it: They minimize the consequences of their vile actions.

An absolutely captivating story, Doyle blends drama, mystery, double-edged, crafty statements (“It is a lesson to us not to trust our own judgment, is it not, Lestrade?) and an abominable villain in The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

6.  The Adventure of Silver Blaze (December 1892, Memoirs)

One of Doyle’s most subtle mysteries, The Adventure of Silver Blaze is also one of his best.  The brilliant idea of setting up the horse as the killer of John Straker, and of permitting Silver Blaze to act in self-defense so that the mistreated equine might not seem culpable, is, of course, a master stroke.  But perhaps some of the soft touches on this wonderful story are even finer.  For instance, after Holmes reads the note from the milliner, it so happens that he then meets Mrs. Straker.  He asks her whether he met her at a garden party; she answers in the negative, and he responds with the remark that he was sure it must be her in the silk, dove-colored dress with ostrich feathers.  (This must be a beautiful dress.  A quick search on the internet to determine whether such queenly treasures are even sold today reveals that, in fact, they are.  There is a gorgeous one hundred percent silk dress with ostrich feather trim listed on Ivan Young’s website for $30,000.)  Mrs. Straker denies ever having owned such a dress, and Holmes’ gentle probing proves a remarkable success.  He has fathomed that Mr. Straker purchased the dress for another woman.

Later, when Colonel Ross states, “So you despair of arresting the murderer of poor Straker,” Holmes answers with such dry humor as to bring a smile to the reader’s face, “There are certainly grave difficulties in the way.”  Indeed there are, as the arrest of a horse would present grave difficulties.  Then, of course, there come two of Doyle’s most two zephyr-like yet damning touches: the “curious incident” of the dog in the night-time and the “singular epidemic” of the sheep.  Both clues serve to assure Holmes that his theory is accurate and thus condemn John Straker; both clues are indicative of Doyle’s position here: that of a masterful writer at work upon a polished text.

Finally, we have Holmes doing what Holmes does best, and that is empathizing.  In wondering where the horse goes, Doyle permits Sherlock to remark, “The horse is a gregarious creature.”  Indeed, it is this comment that leads him to calculate as a horse might.  Upon finding itself stranded on the moor, the horse (unlike, say, more solitary animals such as the fox or owl) may make for what the horse interprets to be civilization, looking for the company of its brother horses.  I do not say that Holmes thinks like a horse, but I believe that here Doyle shows how, more often than not, Holmes uses his great powers to predict what another will do by putting himself, more or less, in that other’s shoes. 

It must be noted that Silver Blaze is not the only episode in which Holmes empathizes, and that sometimes his success in cases is contingent upon his ability to do so.  He professes to put himself into the butler Brunton’s shoes in The Musgrave Ritual, and he is successful; he does not put himself into Irene Adler’s shoes in A Scandal in Bohemia, and he fails there.  The question, it seems, that he asks himself when solving a criminal case, is not so much, “What would I do?” but rather, “What would I do, if I were him?”  The dependent clause, of course, is infused with sympathy and togetherness toward the perpetrator, in the spirit of clearing up the matter for the sake of discovering the truth.

With atmospheric touches to the settings, with the subtlety and care that mark the best of all literature, Doyle gallops by lengths to preeminence in penning The Adventure of Silver Blaze.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

7.  The Man with the Twisted Lip (December 1891, Adventures)

A fine story of disguise, made better by its believability, The Man with the Twisted Lip is one of the strongest stories in the Holmes canon, and considered, by some, to be Doyle’s best.  That Neville St. Clair’s disguise could work, and that its efficacy could fool even such an intimate companion as his wife, ought not be doubted.  CIA officers today tell tales of how they will dress up an agent in the morning, then send him down to lunch with his peers.  The agent’s task is to complete the lunch with his peers under the bright, shadowless lights of the cafeteria.  If his true identity is found out by his classmates, then he fails; if he succeeds in lunching with them without them learning his identity, then he passes.  One after another, thanks to the skill of the make-up artists, the CIA agents pass this test. 

Some readers may find their credulity stretched when they wonder whether Neville St. Clair might have made his career for so long when, at some point, he must have been seen going in and out of the opium den as a respectable-looking man, but even here, the benefit of the doubt must be given to Doyle’s story and to Neville St. Clair.  For the truth of St. Clair’s situation being as bizarre as it is would make it unlikely that any of St. Clair’s peers could have guessed that he would enter the opium den and emerge as Hugh Boone, the man with the twisted lip.  Therefore, this reader believes that St. Clair could have, in fact, pulled off such a strange and outré profession for many years, much as a spy remains undercover.  So long as Hugh stayed out of the rain, so long as he stayed away from fights, so long as he kept clear of anything that might mar his makeup while he was on the job, he ought to have been successful. 

Required reading material in some schools, The Man with the Twisted Lip needs no recap for its plot.  But despite this story’s many adaptations and the general public’s familiarity with it, Twisted Lip has not grown stale nor has it been overworked.  Scenes within it still stand out and become more dear thanks to their familiarity.  I have always liked the scene where Watson finds Holmes in the opium den, and I have also always enjoyed the thinking time where Holmes sits upon the five pillows and consumes an ounce of shag tobacco.  Not to be excluded from this pantheon of re-readable and wonderful scenes is the lower profile moment in the story where St. Clair’s wife shocks Holmes by saying that she received a letter from Neville that day, and Holmes leaps from his chair, roaring and galvanized.  The image brings a smile to my face. 

Neville St. Claire, Hugh Boone, the rascally Lascar, the low opium den, and the ounce of shag tobacco which Holmes smokes make The Man with the Twisted Lip one of the strongest stories that Doyle ever wrote.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

8.  The Adventure of the Speckled Band (February 1892, Adventures)

It is in The Adventure of the Speckled Band that Holmes shows the greatest amount of physical strength that ever he displays, and Doyle shows us the first of the mysteries in which an animal is in some way responsible for a death.  (As I write this, one of my dogs—the littlest, and our only female, Velvet—has come and put her paws upon my leg and rested her head upon my knee as if to put in a good word for the mammals of the animal kingdom, and to say, “Snakes may be bad, but dogs are sweet and good.”)  Like in The Five Orange Pips, there is no time to waste and little margin for error, but this time (as opposed to in Pips), Holmes acts decisively.  He drives out to Stoke Moran, investigates the scene at once, and formulates a plan.  Helen Stoner shall retire early, signal Holmes and Watson when she is in her bedroom, then they shall take her place.  Once in the bedroom, they begin an eerie (and, it must seem to Watson, frighteningly interminable) vigil.  When Dr. Roylott presumes his victim to be asleep, he looses his snake through the dummy ventilator and down the bell rope that doesn’t pull.  Holmes beats the serpent back, and it recoils angrily onto the devilish doctor.  What a story! 

Not only is the mechanism for murder ingenious, but the atmosphere at Stoke Moran is thrilling.  A cheetah and a baboon inhabit the doctor’s grounds!  And Holmes and Watson must cross these grounds to reach Helen Stoner’s window.  Zounds!  However, perhaps in the extraordinary course of Holmes’ adventures, he is more inured to such things than others would be, so he does not find them so outlandish.  So, to gauge the weirdness of the situation more accurately I shall put myself into the shoes of someone more conventional—say, those of Dr. Roylott’s neighbor. 

I imagine that, as Dr. Roylott’s neighbor, I am living a respectable life in staid and genteel England, where all is expected to be decorous, respectable, and unadventurous.  Yet next door to me, this doctor who has returned from India permits a cheetah and a monkey to roam the yard.  Dr. Roylott lets his house fall into disrepair.  Gypsies inhabit his garden.  He’s recently thrown the blacksmith over a rail.  I have reason to believe that he abuses his daughter, and I know that his other daughter died under suspicious and cloudy circumstances.  If I were Dr. Roylott’s neighbor, I would be thinking of him, “What an abominable pest!  What a horrible man!  What a black stain on the neighborhood he is!”  And, if I were the neighbor, upon hearing of Dr. Roylott’s death, I probably would have nodded my head and thought to myself (even while saying aloud to my neighbors, “Ah, such a tragedy.  The inconstancy of life.”), “I wonder how many cartwheels I can do down my living room hall?  And, just how indecent would it really be to plan a parade?”  The coroner, when summoned to examine the circumstances surrounding Dr. Roylott’s death, must have gone out with a skip in his step, and a twinkle in his eye, and he must have been hard-pressed to stifle the song on his lips.  Indeed, it is hard not to imagine the station-master, before Holmes boards the train back to London, stepping out specially to give Holmes a strong, quiet shake of the hand, to meet his Holmes’ eyes, and to give Holmes a manly, solemn, and understanding nod of the head.  Certainly Holmes does the community a great favor in The Adventure of the Speckled Band, and, as to the snake, one may only hope that, as a reward for its services, it was returned to the jungle, where it devoured rats by the kilo, or as many as its serpentine heart desired.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

9.  The Red-Headed League (August 1891, Adventures)

One of two stories, along with Blue Carbuncle, that begins with the words, “I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes”, The Red-Headed League is one of those stories in the Holmes canon whose strength lies in its lack of weaknesses.  Superbly written, pleasant to read, inventive in its plot, and with a quality of creating equally and expertly a mellifluous tone, an inviting atmosphere, and textured characters, The Red-Headed League is an exemplar for the student of prose.

In regards to The Red-Headed League’s tone, the subtle British dry humor, which is so welcome as a source of amusement and which so often rewards the reader when re-reading a text, is manifest here.  Sometimes, all that sets off the humor is the use of a single, well-chosen adjective, or just a properly timed quaint turn of a phrase.  For instance, Holmes asks Wilson, “And what is the name of this obliging youth?” and is, of course, quite wry in his query.  Later in the story, Doyle writes, “his client paused and refreshed his memory with a huge pinch of snuff.” 

As to the atmosphere of the story, it is more than agreeable.  We readers are treated to a gentle rising action in which Watson calls upon Holmes, a seamless transition into hearing the client’s story, and, following that, Holmes engages in what he calls a “quite a three pipe problem.”  Holmes, having arrived at the conclusion that it must be the location of the house that is of interest to John Clay/Vincent Spaulding (I shall call him Spaulding here)—and not the rather uninteresting “average commonplace British tradesman: obese, pompous, and slow” with fiery red hair—he and Watson set out on a walk to Saxe-Coburg Square.  There Doyle describes the pawnbroker’s as “poky” and characterizes the neighborhood as “uncongenial” writing that, “reedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere.”  Doyle then goes on to send Holmes to the concert, where Doyle describes Holmes’ languor in a way that other forms of art—drama and film—have imitated many times since.  (Holmes prefers the German music to the Italian and the French, and as usual I find myself in agreement with him.) 

The characterization in this story is quite fine.  Good characters are hard to define in a sentence or two, yet Doyle puts in the maestro’s touch.  The bank directive is a plaintive, rather skeptical fellow whose attitude changes to respect and wonder in an instant upon the apprehension of Spaulding.  The police inspector is given a few lines of conceit so that, later, he might be brought to the level of Watson and ordinary mortals.  Above all, Doyle’s characterization of Holmes is a model.  At the client’s first visit, Holmes makes a few astute observations to surprise him and to show his worth.  Holmes then sinks into a reverie as he contemplates the problem.  He takes reasonable steps to test his theory: checking Spaulding’s knees, knocking his cane upon the walk, and looking around the block to find the bank—the goal of Spaulding’s game.  Holmes listens to music, then he (in anticipation of his enemy’s movements) waits in patience for his prey to emerge from the tunnel in the floor.  Then, Holmes nabs him.  (One does not readily think of the terrible consequence to Mr. Jabez Wilson if Spaulding had decided to murder the poor man in his bed before setting out into the tunnel, but certainly the possibility existed, and it is a slight mark against Holmes that he failed to take action to prevent the danger.)  The characterization of Holmes in this story is one that helps define the detective for many years to come.  In this way, The Red-Headed League shows its value, for a story when it is published more or less owes its initial success to publicity, but it owes its endurance to the work’s literary merit.  Here we have a story that has lasted in readers’ minds for more than a century, and gives some credence to the Flaubertian words that close the Red-Headed League: L’homme c’est rien, l’œuvre c’est tout.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

The Second Tier: Artistic Treasures

With stories such as Silver Blaze and The Man with the Twisted Lip, we find in the second tier five stories that show Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the height of his not inconsiderable powers.  These stories all share something in common: I loved these stories when I first read them, and I love them still.  Each story in this tier I consider to be magnificent.

10.  The Adventure of the Empty House (October 1903, Return)

The Adventure of the Empty House, in my mind, shall always be associated with The Final Problem.  While some other stories in the canon (such as A Scandal in Bohemia and The Adventure of the Naval Treaty) have multiple parts, they nevertheless feel like cohesive stories.  Empty House is the opposite.  It is a single story that feels as though it is the continuation of The Final Problem. 

Now, it may be immoral of me to say so, but—as a person who believes that evil has existed for as long as humanity, and that evil will be a permanent fixture of humanity’s future—The Empty House makes me pine for reasonable crime.  Hear me out.  So often, one hears of senseless violence, e.g.: the husband, hopped up on a cocktail of drugs, beats and kills his wife.  Terrible, awful, needless!  This is the human at its basest, a vulgar display of our worst aspect.  In The Empty House, however, we have an aesthetic murder, of the sort that is rarest.  A man, with meticulous planning and a silent gun, who has been hunting—with a strong motive and extraordinary patience—his equal adversary, finally has the chance to pull the trigger.  He does pull that trigger, and, at the very moment when he believes his quest is a success, Holmes leaps upon him like a tiger, and torpedoes the villain’s greatest hopes.  Here we have crime with a cause and, what’s more, crime with artistic merit.  If only such crimes were the norm, and the ugly crimes of the commoner were forever blasted from existence, the world would indeed be a better place.

The gun used in The Adventure of the Empty House is nearly as fine a detail as any in the Holmes canon.  At the time, the idea of a silenced weapon (a far more novel idea then than it is today) must have been wonderfully inspiring and intriguing to the average Londoner, whose day—in a year of banalities such as trudging through the London slush, taking out trash, washing clothes, paying rent, blundering through thick fog, and spending many tedious hours as a tailor, or a cart-driver, or a hotel clerk, or what have you—would very rarely be filled with thoughts of exotic, noiseless rifles.  Even today, the silent rifle is a specialist’s tool, and, though far more common than at any time before in history, it is an artifact whose preserve is almost exclusively American, western European, and Russian, and whose utilization still piques curiosity and interest.  Now, there being multiple subsonic rounds that pair well with silencers—in pistols, the 147 grain 9mm and .45 ACP; in rifles, the .300 Blackout and 8.6 Blackout—the prospect of silent murder is more common, yet still very unique in practice.  And, when such murders are carried out with silent weapons (such as by the cowardly murderer Luigi Mangione who shot an unarmed man in the back), the results are often sensational, though the adversaries are rarely on equal footing.  How cunning and subtle it is for Colonel Moran to hunt Holmes with an air rifle!  The stealth, the stalking, and the precise planning produced one of the greatest plots and one of the greatest villains in the Holmes canon.  That they did so was marvelous, that they did so at a moment when, perhaps more than any other, Doyle needed the sum of the parts to be greater than the whole, was superlative.  With accurate aim, Doyle resurrects Holmes and hits the bullseye in The Adventure of the Empty House.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

11.  The Adventure of the Reigate Squire (June 1893, Memoirs)

Containing one of my all-time favorite Holmes lines, “Now, I make a point of never having any prejudices, and of following docilely wherever fact may lead me…” (one that I used as an epigram in my own mystery novel, The Murders in the Endicott Hotel), The Adventure of the Reigate Squire is a lovable story that is made more endearing by seeing Watson’s plans for Holmes to convalesce thwarted at every turn. 

Upon completing an exhausting case that took him across Europe in search of a swindler, Holmes is fatigued.  Our good doctor and chronicler takes him for some fresh country air and relaxation at an old army friend’s house, one who is a bachelor, where news of a very peculiar robbery crops up, causing Holmes’ ears to prick.  His instincts are dampened by the doctor’s wagging finger, however, and Holmes allows his professional self to be subdued.  The next morning, however, when news of a murder appears, there is nothing that Watson or any other earthly force can do to stave Holmes off the case, and the detecting hound’s energy returns as he takes up the hunt again. 

After entering a house with Malplaquet’s date (an 18^th century battle in which the revered English General, the Duke of Marlborough, led England over France) over the door, Holmes tricks the Justice of the Peace into giving evidence against himself by writing the word “twelve”.  Holmes then intentionally spills a water carafe and a bowl of oranges, and, while the others are cleaning up the mess, he slips away, finds the missing part of the note in Alec Cunningham’s dressing-gown pocket, and is strangled by the Cunninghams for his efforts.  He then proceeds to elucidate to Watson, et al, as to how he solved the crime. 

The Squire case is very well written, enjoyable from start to finish, with an air of mystery, strange enough in its manifestation to warrant entry into Watson’s chronicles, and readers are shown sufficient deduction and skill from Holmes to be impressed.  It is really more than solid, and a good many mystery writers have never done better.  Furthermore, there is little to detract from it.  This is one of those stories that I return to when I am looking for a pleasant Holmes story to read, for there is a bit of mischief in Doyle’s writing when he stymies Watson time and again that makes the narrative amusing, while the mystery, clues, and solution are strong enough to keep me entertained, even though I know the plot’s resolution.  Indeed, quintessentially Holmesian and worth many re-reads is The Adventure of the Reigate Squire.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

12.  The Adventure of the Priory School (February 1904, Return)

An extremely original and arresting Holmes story, The Adventure of the Priory School takes us up north to meet two of Doyle’s more memorable characters—the Duke of Holdernesse and his secretary, James Wilder.  With his long red beard and austere character, the duke is at once a victim and a perpetrator, though his social standing makes him mostly invulnerable to prosecution.  Wilder—illegitimate son, bypassed heir, vengeful young man, and casualty of his own machinations—is interesting because, though an ostensibly weaker force than the duke, it is Wilder’s scheming that so often drives the duke’s decision making.  Throw in the brilliancy that is the horses’ hooves which are shod to look like cattle tracks, and readers are treated to one of Doyle’s prettiest little mysteries. 

Heidigger, the German master, has gone missing along with Lord Saltire, and the supposition in the official force is that the young heir has been kidnapped by the morose school teacher.  A bit of luck—the road that serves the priory school was watched at one end by a constable and at the other by a party on the lookout for something else—serves to allow Holmes to eliminate both the eastern and western routes from the priory school as directions of Saltire’s egress, and, with the southern route from the priory school inaccessible to bicycles thanks to the presence of numerous stone walls, Holmes may safely focus his attention on the northern territory.  In a morass, Holmes and Watson search about for bicycle tracks, looking, in particular, for a Palmer tire, yet finding first a Dunlop with a patch.  This tire, they later discover, belongs to Wilder, and, as readers, we are granted profound insights into Holmes’ investigative powers, insights such as we could only hope for in stories like Black Peter, when the first week of Holmes’ investigations are shrouded from us.  Here, though, we are able to follow Holmes every step of the way, even as he and Watson follow the tire tracks to Heidigger’s body.  It is the grisly discovery of this corpse that sets off terrific consternation in the mind of the scheming secretary, for though he’d planned for the abduction of Lord Saltire, he had not foreseen that such tragedy would be wrought by his uncontrollable minion: the brutish and unsympathetic Mr. Reuben Hayes. 

Holmes and Watson, waiting outside the inn, find the boy (whom, thankfully, Doyle assures us is being treated well), and, what’s more, they discover how shamefully the duke acts.  Rather than expose Wilder, the duke covers for him at the expense of young Lord Saltire.  Holmes, rightfully, takes an opportunity to chide the duke over this, after receiving his check for six thousand pounds (equivalent to 1.1 million USD in 2025!).  To satisfy Holmes’ curiosity, the duke then shows Holmes and Watson into a museum room in the hall where the ingenious cloven footed shoes are kept: relics from yesteryear when they were allegedly used by robber-barons, a class of people who seem to have transitioned into a class contemporarily, and perhaps modernly, called: the nobility. 

From the sensational entry of Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable (Thorneycroft!  What a name!  Can you imagine naming your child that?  Or even proposing the name to your partner when talking of potential baby names?  What kind of a family… But I digress—to each their own; we must live and let live), to the wonderful revelation that the horses’ feet were shod to look like those of cattle, to the unlooked-for and surprising twist that James Wilder is not only the duke’s secretary but his illegitimate son, there is no shortage of intrigue in The Adventure of the Priory School, and this reader, for one, would have been happy to have accompanied Holmes to other cases in the north of England, or even further: up to Scotland and its majestic, fog-wreathed isles.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

13.  The Final Problem (December 1893, Memoirs)

Sorely am I tempted to place The Final Problem within the top ten, though the story itself is not as gripping as some others that are better ranked.  For indeed, The Final Problem introduces us to Professor James Moriarty, whose name has become the apotheosis for Machiavellian evil.  Moriarty has achieved such popular notoriety that—since the long-ago beginning of his meteoric rise—he’s now either equaled or displaced such mononymical worthies as Iago, Faust, and Fagin.  Moriarty has become the symbol of the sinister spider at the center of the web, he who but plucks a thread and thereby sets in motion a finely made and necessary part of a precise master plan.  He is the beating heart of the body that capillaries, veins, and arteries flow through.  Or, it can also be said, he is the brain that works the body.  If for no other reason than this colossal professor, The Final Problem deserves consideration of a high place in any Holmes-ranking’s list.

And in The Final Problem, not only do we meet Moriarty, but Doyle kills off Holmes.  For eight years, Holmes lies at the stony bottom of Reichenbach Falls, less transparent than the ghost of Hamlet’s father, less present than the skull of poor Yorick.  We have not a word, not a whisper, not a hope for Holmes; like all those faithfully departed whom we care deeply about, he becomes gone but not forgotten. 

Following his death, a distraught, yelping readership cancelled, en masse, subscriptions with Strand Magazine to express their displeasure.  Only if JK Rowling had killed off Harry Potter halfway before book four ended could such a seismic result have been registered today on the literary Richter scale.  For the demigods of modern literature have never ruled the literary universe like Potter, Holmes, Voldemort, and Moriarty have.  Lisbeth Salander, Pennywise, Paul Atreides, and Daenerys Targaryen are contemporary literary icons whose roles have translated well upon the silver screen, but none possess the cachet of Potter and Holmes.  We can only thank Heaven that, in killing off Holmes, there was not the whiff of treachery by faithful Watson, otherwise, when Doyle brought him back, we would have had no end of resurrection story parallels.

Still, despite the rippling ramifications of The Final Problem, it has always waffled at The Rest Test: the story that, on a cold, winter’s night—when I am relaxing, and I want something homey, pleasant, and familiar to read—I will pick up and turn to.  And there are multiple stories in the Holmes canon that strongly pass that test for me.  Partly I am dissuaded by The Final Problem’s incomplete ending, for I know that Holmes returns in The Empty House as a poor bibliophile carrying The Origin of Tree Worship.  (And The Empty House feels, in some ways, like the second half of The Final Problem.)  Partly I am dissuaded by the lack of mystery; this chronicle feels more deserving of its title of Adventure than most other Holmes stories do.  And, finally, despite all the harm that Moriarty is reputed to do, we, as the audience, never actually see him succeed at anything.  Killer Evans in The Three Garridebs actually wounds Watson.  Irene Adler stays a step ahead of Holmes.  Baron Gruner’s men smash Holmes’ head.  Dr. Grimesby Roylott bends a poker with his bare hands.  But Moriarty cannot kill Holmes, though he does send him packing to the Continent.  There is much for and much against this weighty story, so, at last, we see that proper placing on a list of Holmesian stories is a challenge with regard to The Final Problem.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

14.  A Scandal in Bohemia (June 1891, Adventures)

Irene Adler—the Marie Curie, the Joan of Arc, the Judit Polgár of Holmesian fiction—is introduced here in Doyle’s first short Sherlock story.  And brazen indeed it is for Doyle to start Holmes off in his short story career with a failure!  When one puts him or herself into the author’s shoes, and one imagines setting out with a number of stories, the idea of starting your masterful detective off with a failure feels strongly like a nonstarter.  Granted, Holmes has previously succeeded in mysteries that were written in novel-length form (A Study in Scarlet, 1887 and The Sign of the Four, 1890).  Still, so daunting—so rife with seemingly unnecessary risk—is the prospect of giving Holmes a goose egg on his first short outing that most authors, nearly all, would shy from it.  The fact that Doyle allows Holmes to fail in his first outing shows the reader from the very beginning that here is a writer with stones.  Perhaps, readers may suppose, Doyle is supremely confident in his writing, almost arrogantly so.  Perhaps Doyle’s disinclined to put much stock in what the reader’s tastes are, or into whether the reader likes his work.  Perhaps, the reader may fairly wonder, Doyle has just goofed tremendously; he has, as the saying goes, “gotten in wrong,” and his work shall founder and be lost to the sprawling, mountainous stacks of great but unnoticed writing.  So it is reasonable here, at the outset of Doyle’s career, to wonder what influence The Strand Magazine had on Doyle’s success.  

In the first place, The Strand Magazine was widely read, with a circulation that was highest in London, one of the most literate places in the world.  Furthermore, the magazine’s high rate of publication allowed Holmes to rebound quickly from his initial defeat, and it also allowed Doyle to keep his detective foremost in readers’ minds.  Between June of 1891 when A Scandal in Bohemia story was published and August, not a peep was heard of Holmes.  But, between August of 1891 and June of 1892, Doyle produced eleven more short stories, one for every month.  In June of 1892 came the end of The Adventures, Doyle’s first collection of Holmes stories.  Already in December of 1892, Doyle began publishing the stories that would comprise The Memoirs, and he published every month (The Naval Treaty was a two-part story) until December of 1893.  From the first words that introduce Holmes in A Study in Scarlet in 1887 to the demise of Holmes in The Final Problem in December of 1893 (presumably a Christmas gift that Doyle wanted more for himself than for his audience), Doyle wrote an almost Dickensian 278,000 words.  This is more than a quarter of a million good words, with many dazzling sentences, and with many enviable turns of the English language.  The adventures, then, of Holmes hinged greatly upon the rate at which high-quality Holmes stories were produced, and they were produced very, very quickly.  One may well wonder how many Holmes stories Doyle had stashed up his sleeve, for it’s not easy to cobble together a good mystery story every month, much less one that (in The Adventures) averages about 8,700 words in length.  And while we’re on the subject, here are the average lengths of stories in every Holmes collection.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: 8,744 average words per story

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: 7,971 average words per story

The Return of Sherlock Holmes: 8,656 average words per story

His Last Bow: 8,463 average words per story

The Case-Book: 6,911 average words per story

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stories shorten in length continually till we reach Doyle’s final collection, The Case-Book.   And, since we’re here, and I have never seen the collections ranked, I will rank them, from best to worst. 

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sparkling from first to last, and a great pleasure to read, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains many of Doyle’s finest literary gems and jewels. 
2. The Return of Sherlock Holmes – After Conan Doyle gives himself a break, his readers are rewarded.  Abbey Grange, Second Stain, Empty House, Norwood Builder, Charles Augustus Milverton, and The Golden Pince-Nez are all wonderful, wonderful stories.
3. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Best known, perhaps, for The Final Problem, The Memoirs also contains such great tales as Silver Blaze and The Reigate Squire.  It seems, on looking back, that Doyle might have been undergoing some fatigue in the middle of this collection, but he did his best by the stories, and they are all very well written.
4. His Last Bow – Doyle’s shortest collection may be best remembered for the ingenious means of two disposals: that of Cadogen West’s corpse and (nearly) that of Lady Frances Carfax’s, for the poor woman barely survives her ordeal.
5. The Case-Book – A wildly uneven collection which is, unfortunately, tattooed by a few of Doyle’s stories that are so bad that some scholars have questioned whether Doyle actually wrote them, The Case-Book is a collection that ought to have been trimmed of its dead weight.  For Doyle, whose august reputation was already established, such stories as The Three Gables, The Mazarin Stone, The Veiled Lodger, The Creeping Man, and The Sussex Vampire would have been better attributed to another author.  Still, such stories as Shoscombe Old Place, The Three Garridebs, and Thor Bridge vindicate the collection and make it a worthy volume to add to any personal library.

Returning to Irene Adler in A Scandal in Bohemia, she has come to occupy, despite her fleeting appearance, a place in the canon that is equals such secondary characters as Mycroft, Lestrade, and Col. Sebastian Moran.  Adler has not the stature of Watson, but her presence seems greater than that of Hopkins, most villains, and every other woman in the canon, including Mary, Watson’s wife.  Accordingly, Irene Adler has been frequently adapted on stage and on screen.  She has entered the public consciousness, or she is, at the least, on its fringe.  She has also not yet been overworked nor lost to the changed mores of our era, as some other characters—James Bond, for instance—seem to have been.  There is room for Irene Adler to grow, and she can occupy a role that satisfies more than token feminism.  I would love to see her, for instance, engaged in another duel of wits with Holmes (even while both are mostly preoccupied with other things; he with a major case; she with her work)—and, at the outcome, have the outcome be a clean draw.  Others may want to see Adler as the titular character in a production, but, if she does play a lead, her role should neither be clearly defined as protagonist or antagonist.  Already, audiences have been treated to an Enola Holmes (and, of course, to an Enola sequel), so the space for a female lead that acts as a sleuth is already occupied in the Holmes universe.  And because Adler’s character in A Scandal in Bohemia is one that was primarily concerned with her own self defense, Adler doesn’t seem to be a suitable character for an antagonist’s role.  Adler would do very poorly, for instance, cast as a Harley Quinn to Moriarty’s Joker—an avenue that I could envision Hollywood executives talking themselves into taking.  Irene Adler needs to remain her own character: a freethinking woman, a bittersweet wildcard with a strong moral code, someone who can amicably clash with Sherlock Holmes’ intellect, and someone who can leave a king panting, as she did in A Scandal in Bohemia.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

15.  The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (December 1908, Last Bow)

An exquisite story, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans is most notable for its ingenious method of disposing of young Cadogen West’s body.  West’s murderers, when the train beneath their window pauses, place West’s body atop the train.  The train carries the corpse off, then throws the body from its rounded roof to the ground while cornering.  West’s body is found with no train ticket, a requisite for boarding the train, but with seven semi-critical papers relating to the patents of the new Bruce-Partington submarine.  Three patent papers remain—first they are in the hands of the traitorous and indebted Col. Valentine Walter and, afterwards, in the murderous spy’s, Oberstein’s, grubby paws.  These papers are the most important, and Holmes and Watson must find them.  They do so, first by luring Walters into a trap, then by enticing Oberstein into a similar one.  Both Walter and Oberstein rot in prison, while Holmes, for his services, gets an emerald tie-pin from the queen, and Watson gets a story to add to his collection. 

Reminiscent of The Second Stain in some ways—with its list of three spies, focus on international intrigue, and stakes of national security—The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans also seems to borrow from The Adventure of the Naval Treaty.  Both Naval Treaty and Bruce-Partington feature, as villains, unlikely and treasonous family members: Joseph Harrison and Valentine Walter.  All three stories share a whiff of espionage.  Here, however, we are treated to a special appearance.  The inclusion of Mycroft, who leaves his orbit, is more coal for the Partington engine.  Not often are we treated to an appearance from brother Mycroft, and this instance is the only occasion in the canon that he visits Holmes’ quarters.  Typically able to collate affairs of state from his office chair, this Woolwich Arsenal matter brings Mycroft ’round, and, like seeing a leopard on a safari, we feel a real thrill at his sighting.  So, though there’re some echoes of other stories in Bruce-Partington,there’s still enough ingenuity to keep readers clattering pleasantly along this tale’s tracks. 

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

16.  The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet (May 1892, Adventures)

One of those stories in the canon that, to be properly appreciated, ought to be annotated with modern day monetary values, The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet is a classic illustration of Holmes’ understanding of how “circumstantial evidence may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”  To begin with, the amounts of money in the story seem trifling since the story was published in May of 1892, and inflation hadn’t yet wrecked our collective understanding of what money means.  Here I’ll convert the financial figures in the story from 19^th century British pounds to 21^st century U.S. dollars so that we can better understand the staggering sums that are at stake.  I’ll round the numbers off.

Mr. Holder’s client’s request for a loan: £50,000 ≈ $10,130,000.

Lowest estimated value of the beryl coronet: £100,000 ≈ $20,250,000.

Arthur’s request for money: £200 ≈ $40,500.

Mr. Holder’s reward for the coronet: £1,000 ≈ $200,000.

Holmes’ reward for recovering the beryls: £4,000 ≈ $810,000 (3/4^ths of which are spent in recovery of the stones).

I think that normally financially situated mortals such as myself will agree that Holmes has done himself well by earning roughly $200,000 (modern day dollars) for a day’s brilliant work on the Beryl case.  Consideration of this payment, along with his later million dollar check (again, year 2025 USD) from The Priory School’s Duke of Holdernesse, casts a somewhat cynical light upon Holmes’ remark to the duke that he is “a poor man.”  Perhaps Holmes is truly poor, and he speaks the untainted truth, but the sleuthing game is profitable.  More likely, Holmes spoke to the duke with human embellishment, for it seems reasonable, with the sums mentioned here, that Holmes can afford to take a case pro bono now and again.  Indeed, it seems likely that Holmes must have been an extremely wealthy man, one of the world’s so-called one-percenters.  That is not to say that he hasn’t earned his money; it is to say that his “I’m a poor man” statements, which seem to cast him as a humble commoner, may be a trifle disingenuous, or at least such statements pretermit the whole state of his financial affairs.  So the figures in this case are helpful not only for examining Holmes’ wealth (this reader wonders why, after many years, he hasn’t bought his Baker Street apartment, but continues to rent), but are also useful for contemporizing the exalted circles in which Holmes sometimes works.

Beyond the jaw-dropping amounts of money mentioned in this story, there is the artful way that Conan Doyle frames the case.  Suspicion is cast at once on the degenerate son, Arthur, who ultimately turns out to have acted in a most chivalrous manner.  Arthur’s father—a man who would have acted wisely if he’d have but left the beryl coronet in the bank’s safe, and to have told no one about it—turns out to be at fault for blaming his son and failing to detect that his niece had fallen madly in love with a scoundrel, thief, and cad: the dishonorable Sir George Burnwell.  Holmes must extend himself to the maximum to clear up the case, and he must do so quickly—for we learn, at the end of the mystery, that, fast though Holmes acted, the stones had already been fenced once. 

To solve the case, Holmes goes hounding through the snow, and he tracks footprints down an alleyway.  He examines windowsills to see where prints have gone.  He forms a tenable theory which leads him to Burnwell.  He dons a disguise.  He purchases the stones back on behalf of their rightful owner.  Nothing more can be expected from our brilliant detective.  As to Mr. Holder, one can only wonder how, and with what degree of horror, the banker’s illustrious client will react on receiving his precious security back, whose injury, he said, “would be almost as serious as its complete loss.”  Yet there’s nothing to be done for Mr. Holder here, except to silently chastise him for not using the bank safe, and to hope that some skilled jeweler can repair the coronet.  His troubles lie beyond our compass, and we may satisfy ourselves with the virtuoso performance of Holmes in the magnificent Adventure of the Beryl Coronet.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

17.  The Problem of Thor Bridge (February – March 1922)

Perhaps the most ingenious of all Doyle’s death methods, The Problem of Thor Bridge is also the only mystery that I can recall offhand in the Holmes canon whose solution is a suicide.  The gist of Thor Bridge is that a jealous wife, seeking to punish her husband and to end her own suffering, frames the woman whom her husband has come to love.  And the jilted spouse completes her plans in an extraordinarily imaginative fashion.  She ties a revolver to a stone that she sinks into a pond on the side of Thor Bridge, blows her own brains out, and, when she dies, she of course releases the pistol, and, thanks to the weight of the stone, the pistol goes slithering off the bridge and sinks into the water, thereby disposing of the murder weapon.  Prior to this, the wife had written her unfortunate and innocent rival a note to ask her to commune with her on the bridge.  Thus, the rival was to be expected on the bridge and was therefore likely to be blamed for the murder of the wife.  It is thanks to a chip on Thor Bridge’s stone and the presence of a pair of revolvers, a duplicate set, that Holmes is able to penetrate through the thick fog of this dense mystery. 

A wonderful, wonderful solution.  One can only imagine the Eureka moment that Doyle must have had when he thought of this quaint and fantastic suicide device.  Perhaps he picked up a pen immediately and began to write.  Perhaps he stewed for hours or days over the perfect narrative elixir with which to blend his sinking-revolver plot device.  One would like to know the author’s process behind this story, but those details are likely consigned to history’s oblivion.  Still, the sinking-revolver idea is a plum, and one of Conan Doyle’s very best—a fine feather in the cap for a man who had more than his fair share of fine feathers. 

Aside from the striking pistol-into-the-pond trick, The Problem of Thor Bridge is quintessentially written.  It begins classically with a breakfast scene (perhaps the most traditional way to start a Holmes story) on a blustery October day (autumn and winter—with the thick fogs, brisk winds, deep snows, and early darkness—seem the most poetic seasons for Holmes’ London), then an introductory letter is provided, followed by an appearance from the client. 

It feels worth a digression here to remark that perhaps no other formulaic scenario in literature can be subject to such repetition and dinting while becoming ever yet more attractive.  It is a fairly cardinal rule that most other literary devices scream for innovation and change at every opportunity, yet the Holmesian breakfast scene, with its air of tradition and conservatism, seems to want nothing more than to be frozen in time, brought out now and again in the same state as before, with very few changes to people and the details of the introductory letters, then returned back to cold storage, where it may wait, unchanged in stasis, till its author brings it back out again.  In fact, there is something familiar about the Holmes breakfast scene which makes it representative of, or even a symbol of, the Victorian era.  Perhaps what lends the breakfast scenes their weight is the rattling carriages, the gloomy fogs, the glowing lamps, the solitary plane tree in 221B’s back garden, the brick streets, the casted social structure, the gelled formality of invitations and cards, and the relatively carefree hedonism of cigars and revolvers that came before lung cancer and mass shootings so besmirched the pair.  Perhaps other things contribute to the sway of the breakfast scenes, such as the stature of the people who appear in Holmes’ drawing room (like Professor Moriarty himself) or the emotional plight of the supplicants who beseech Holmes for help (such as the unhappy John Hector McFarlane from The Norwood Builder).  Surely there are other things beyond these details which make the breakfast scenes so welcome and so Victorian and so atmospheric, but they cannot all be listed; it is sufficient to say that their recycled yet looked-for reappearances are an example of the exception in the adage that there is an exception to every rule, when the rule in literature calls for invention.

Beyond the beginning of the story, with its breakfast scene, there is the sense of the dramatic in this Holmes story.  He takes out Watson’s revolver while they are in the carriage, empties its cylinders of all but one cartridge, then procures a ball of twine from the village shop.  He then goes out to the bridge to test his unspoken theory.  Holmes’ test makes policemen look out the corners of their eyes at him, and the test leaves Watson in silent perplexity.  With a resounding cry of, “Now for it!” the great detective lifts the pistol to his head, lets it go, watches it whisked off the bridge by the stone, and sees it chip the parapet.  “Was there ever a more exact demonstration?” Holmes demands, delighted, vindicated, and relieved by his exercise.  The drama shown here is characteristic of the best of Holmes’ stories, for it shows that our cold, aloof detective is indeed emotionally invested in the welfare of his clients and in finding the truth.  Here he has found truth once again, and he may rest in easy satisfaction knowing that he has solved the abstruse Problem of Thor Bridge.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

The Third Tier: Bedtime Classics

Truth be told, when I reach for a Holmes story at bedtime, I do not usually seriously consider the entire canon.  More often than not, my interest is limited to about twenty stories.  These are the stories that I derive the greatest pleasure in reading.  A good tone, scintillating prose, excellent dialogue, and ingenuity of plot characterize the stories of the first, second, and third tiers.  The stories in this third tier, such as The Golden Pince-Nez and A Scandal in Bohemia attract me, but not quite as strongly as those in the next two.

18.  The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez (July 1904, Return)

A clever yet lugubrious little case that opens in such tempestuous weather that it makes one want to stay inside and get cozy while the elements do their worst without, The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez is one which sees Holmes use his faculties of deduction and manipulation at considerably high rates.  He begins with an analysis of the Russian woman’s glasses, deducing, among other things, that her eyes are set closely together, that she’s been recently to the optometrist, and that she’s well dressed.  Holmes’ deductions seem reasonable, and his remark that few objects provide such a wide field for introspection as glasses is astute.  Thanks to the squally weather and the need for an early start, Hopkins stays at Holmes and Watson’s Baker Street address, and the three depart for Professor Coram’s house first thing the next day.  When they arrive, Holmes puts his insightfulness to use again, determining that, for such a far-sighted woman, her nimbleness in effecting an outdoor escape would have been nigh-on impossible, and that, therefore, there was a likelihood that she’d remained in the house.  Indeed, on finding that coconut carpeting ran both to and from the chamber where Willoughby Smith was murdered, Holmes discovers that the perpetrator likely, with her imperfect vision, took the wrong route and ended in the professor’s room.  After smoking a number of fine Alexandrian cigarettes, Holmes, Watson, and Hopkins leave the professor’s room, and they make good use of their time in the garden, where Holmes subtly solicits essential information to the effect that the professor’s appetite has increased.  On returning to the professor’s study, Holmes “inadvertently” knocks the cigarettes to the floor, and, after bending down to pick them up, makes the startling declaration that he’s solved the mystery at that very moment, in that very room—a declaration made possible by the fact that he’s seen that the cigarette ash (which resulted from all the cigarettes that he smoked) has been disturbed by the woman hiding in the book case.  She exits on her own accord, relates her Russian revolutionary story, and dies of a poison that she’s intentionally ingested.  The professor, aged and tobacco-sodden as he is, will likely never have to face such strict punishment as he’s condemned Alexis, of the Siberian salt mines, to, and Holmes and Watson make a trip to the consulate with the liberating papers in hopes of freeing the condemned revolutionary. 

It seems that Doyle squeezes as much juice as possible out of the fruits of this particular story, and it’s easy to congratulate him on all the ways in which he went right.  The stormy weather at the beginning of the story not only serves for atmosphere, but it plays a part in the plot.  The pince-nez speculations made by Holmes are proven correct fewer than twenty-four hours later when the Russian woman appears from behind the book case.  Even Professor Coram’s handicap and immobility prove essential to the plot, for Holmes’ demonstration (that the ash has been disturbed) rely on the fact that an ambulant person was in the professor’s room during lunch time.  Holmes’ great skill makes this case seem to be a simple one, but, like good sleight-of-hand, the appearance is deceiving.  The mystery, as Hopkins shows, was in fact a tremendously tricky one, and Holmes is at his most casually impressive when he solves, with misleading ease, a case as fraught with complexity as The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

19.  The Adventure of the Copper Beeches (June 1892, Adventures)

A tale devoted almost entirely to its telling by Miss Violet Hunter, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches is one of those stories where Holmes does very little.  I doubt there is a story in the Holmes canon in which a single character is as responsible for as much expostulation as Miss Violet Hunter, but, since her character is a pleasant and reasonable one, she’s as easy to follow along with as Watson is.  Doyle doesn’t give us much time to linger over mystery here.  Hunter tells her story, and, for a fortnight, Watson and Holmes wait for developments.  Hunter’s wire appears, asking them to visit the Copper Beeches on the outskirts of Winchester.  Watson and Holmes travel to meet Miss Hunter, and, once there, she apprises them of the happenings at the Copper Beeches estate.  After hearing her narrative, Holmes guesses at the state of the affairs, and his supposition is very near to the actual truth.  The three investigate the mysterious tower that evening, where they find that Mr. Rucastle’s daughter has been spirited away by her young lover.  (The two lovers subsequently flee to the far side of the world, to Mauritius, which was British from 1810 to 1968.)

My memories of reading this story for the first time many years ago are still clear.  I was favorably impressed by Miss Hunter, and I was fascinated by the description of an “electric blue” dress.  Doyle describes Hunter quite adroitly as, “plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.”  The description is one of his better ones, and, over the years, I have had cause, when encountering certain women, to apply this thought to them: She has the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.  It’s a description that suits some bright and confident and savvy women very admirably, I think, and these sorts of women are always, in my opinion, good conversationalists from whom I may learn something.  The description of the dress’ color as “electric blue” also caught my attention, for Doyle’s colors are usually more muted—though there are, of course, exceptions—but this, to me, seems to be the strongest color description in the Holmes canon.  Occasionally there are examples of flashy individuals (Hugh Boone and Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein spring to mind), but typically Doyle’s England is populated by people with a more muted sense of fashion.  The apparel of such folk as Black Peter, the inhabitants of the Abbey Grange, Mr. Jonas Oldacre, Dr. Leslie Armstrong, Miss Violet Smith, and others seems subdued and nearly de rigueur. 

Despite this story’s high ranking, I have wished for a scene in which Holmes does some sleuthing, and perhaps a scene in which the imprisoned daughter is able to confront (and get the better of) her terrible father.  (Frankly, it would not have bothered me greatly if Watson’s shot had gone amiss, and he’d have blown the brains out of Jephro Rucastle, rather than the abused dog.  Imagine if Carlo the dog were saved!  Holmes and Watson could have adopted and healed the dog throughout the stories, and Carlo would have made for an interesting companion who, more often than not, lay sprawled in front of the Baker Street hearth fire but, when necessary, provided a bit of teeth-baring, growling menace any time that an unruly individual threatened Holmes or Watson.  Carlo could also have become a begrudging favorite of Mrs. Hudson, who would slip him treats on the sly.)  Overall, in this solidly written story, but one which has opportunities for improvement, readers may be glad that Rucastle’s daughter, Alice, escaped, and that Miss Violet Hunter went on to better things after The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

20.  The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual (May 1893, Memoirs)

An extremely arcane and complex problem that Holmes solves in less than a day, The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual is the canonical story that reminds me most of Edgar Allan Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado.  Both feature immurements of a living being, and both feature great distress, as manifested in unhinged laughter, among the characters.  It may also be worth noting that the maid Rachel Howells immured the butler Brunton after he (like Fortunato in A Cask of Amontillado) added insult to injury.  Both tales share these dark elements, and both end with freedom for the perpetrators: neither Howells nor Montresor are persecuted for their breathtakingly horrible crimes. 

The Musgrave Ritual is a fairly unique one in that it is narrated by Holmes while he is drawing on his old letters.  It is also singular for being, at its core, a treasure hunt with a mystery.  The story has, to drive it, the cryptic Musgrave ritual and the character of the butler, Brunton, who is one of the strongest in the canon.  Intelligent and handsome, a Jeeves who is fit for a station far greater than that which stratified England could permit him to take, Brunton recognizes a clue that ten generations of Musgraves have failed to detect.  The understanding that the old property is the burial ground of some of the Kingdom’s most priceless artifacts impels Brunton to risk his career at the Musgrave household, but his infidelity to Howells costs him, for she—whether by intent or accident we never learn—buries him alive.  Poor Brunton was Doyle’s Icarus, one who flew too close to the sun, and so was burned and crashed.  Holmes traces Brunton’s flight toward the gold, and he deduces, with remarkable rapidity, that the Musgrave ritual is, in fact, a treasure map. 

That the mystery’s solution is arrived at so quickly, in such a compressed frame of time, is perhaps the most jarring part of this story.  Holmes meets Musgrave, who tells his story, and who brings with him a copy of the ritual.  Their meeting is in the morning.  That afternoon, Musgrave and Holmes are in Hurlstone, where Reginald Musgrave’s estate is located.  In but a single afternoon, Holmes finds the appropriate trees, whittles out a stake for his geometric calculations, follows the ritual to Brunton’s body, summons the police, and recovers the jewels.  That such rapid work is possible is technically feasible.  However, Sussex, where Hurlstone is located, is some fifty degrees north latitude, and at that latitude, the sun would cast its shadow in very different ways in different seasons, so it is hard to know how accurate Holmes’ calculations would be with relation to the ritual.  He would need to make his calculations at the correct time of the correct season, and the oak and the elm trees’ measurements would need to be roughly the same size as they were when the ritual was first made.  Still, the slim possibility exists that Holmes’ calculations could be made, and, made quickly.  Therefore, though this reader is skeptical of the likelihood of Holmes’ quick triumph in the face of such diverse variables and external factors, I have no firm evidence to say that Holmes could not accomplish what he says he did, so I shall believe him and say that Holmes proves himself to be quite the genius in The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

21.  The Adventure of the Naval Treaty (October-November 1893, Memoirs)

The Adventure of the Naval Treaty finds Holmes at his most confident—nearly swanning, it seems—as Conan Doyle appears to try to meet his audience’s expectations that his detective’s genius be accompanied by eccentricity.  Holmes takes a rose, declares how lovely it is, then implies that the certainty of God may be found in the aesthetic pleasure of such beautiful things as flowers, one of His many creations.  Holmes’ almost forced oddity extends to the tobacco in the Persian slipper, and to a rather bizarre and irrelevant comment about boarding schools which he and Watson view from the perspective of an elevated train.  While Holmes undertakes this devil-may-care and prideful attitude, Conan Doyle somehow permits Sherlock to have made independent inquiries about the family history of Miss Harrison and Mr. Joseph Harrison without affording Holmes the opportunity to make such inquiries.  For, when and how Holmes asks about the Harrison family are matters that are not addressed; accordingly, it seems as though, in Doyle’s penning of The Naval Treaty, he is more concerned with crafting an idiosyncratic Holmes than attending to the details of plot coherence. 

Personally, I prefer it when any detective story’s plots are ironclad; I rank coherence and believability as two of the most important traits that any plot can have.  Also—if my detective is a cold, empirical logician like Holmes is purported to be—then I have but a milquetoast feeling toward the injection of much whimsy into his character, and I find it repugnant when Holmes is made out to be silly (unless the Holmes story is one of those rare adaptations that is primarily intended to be comedy).  Character deficiencies—such as unmanly silliness, and idiosyncrasy that borders on lunacy—are, I find, becoming more prevalent in modern-day adaptations, and this reader, for one, often finds them exhausting and puerile.  Give me a cunning, watertight plot with a polite, pragmatic, dry detective, and leave the jackassery to Johnny Knoxville’s crew, if you please.

Still, the problem in this story is a nice one.  A pile of papers have been taken from a place with but a single exit that leads into a passageway that forks.  The thief escapes down one path, while the poor clerk and the janitor scramble back up the other to find that the papers are gone.  It is thanks to the fact that the papers cannot be gotten to for nine weeks, and these papers’ subsequent inability to appear on the international market, that Holmes deduces that the papers cannot have been sold.  He focuses his suspicions on the other person who was intended to meet Percy that fateful day, Joseph Harrison, and Holmes allows Harrison to lead him to the papers’ hiding place.  Harrison turns out to be an aggressive devil, and he slashes Holmes with a knife before Holmes subdues him, swelling one of Harrison’s eyes shut in the process.  Holmes restores the naval treaty to rightful hands; Percy rejoices; his career is salvaged, and the nation is saved from a grievous wound in The Adventure of the Naval Treaty.

I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.

Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories

22.  The Adventure of the Dancing Men (December 1903, Return)

Perhaps the occultist and spiritualist Doyle had been reading about Egyptian hieroglyphics when he wrote The Adventure of the Dancing Men, or perhaps he’d been reading of the Orient’s written languages, for the childlike little figures, which each stand for letters, seem more related to pictoral writing than to alphabets.  Or, perhaps he’d been perusing Edgar Allan Poe’s cryptographic tale “The Gold Bug.”  Regardless of where Doyle drew his inspiration from, the glyphs of dancing men is a genius idea, and Doyle deserves commendation for it.  On a different note, this modern reader wonders how long it took Doyle to write this story, considering that he had to craft a unique dancing man for each letter in his code, then transcribe that letter into a form that The Strand Magazine could publish.  Though we may never know the answer to that question, we may feel certain that The Dancing Men was not the Holmes story that Doyle wrote most quickly. 

The Dancing Men, at its heart, is a tragedy, and one that is to my mind most similar to The Five Orange Pips.  Both stories concern characters with unspeakable American pasts, both stories contain references to abstract messages left upon sun dials, and both end in ignominy for Holmes.  In both cases, Pips and Dancing Men, Holmes probably would have been better served to have been more forthcoming with his clients.  In the case of The Dancing Men, one wonders whether he might have advised his client, Mr. Hilton Cubitt, to heed his wife’s pleas (she wished to travel out of Norfolk and thus avoid exposure to danger).  In such a scenario, Holmes and Watson could have remained at Cubitt’s Norfolk estate, laid a trap for the villain Abe Slaney, and so saved their client’s life. 

As it stands, Holmes deciphers the cryptogram and catches the villain, but the victory is Pyrrhic; Mr. Hilton Cubitt is slain by Abe Slaney, and Cubitt’s wife shoots herself in the head in an attempt at suicide.  The final paragraph, which reads like an epilogue, states that Abe Slaney was originally condemned to death, but that his sentence was changed to prison time thanks to the “mitigating” certainty that Cubitt fired first.  Perhaps I’m overly bloodthirsty, but I think Slaney should have gotten the noose for instigating the affair with Cubitt’s wife, for widowing the blameless woman, and for suffusing the remainder of her life with overtones of sorrow.  Justice is not the way of the world, however, as we know from real life and from such fictitious, whirling events as in The Adventure of the Dancing Men.