The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters - Arthur Conan Doyle
Section: A Scandal in Bohemia
The one case in which Holmes is outmanoeuvred, and by a woman. The King of Bohemia hires Holmes to recover a compromising photograph held by Irene Adler, an American opera singer and former mistress. Holmes deploys disguises and an elaborate false fire alarm to locate the photograph, but Adler sees through the stratagem and flees the country with her new husband, leaving behind only a letter and a portrait. Holmes refuses the King's payment and asks instead for the photograph of Adler - the only person to earn his lasting respect, referred to ever after simply as "the woman."
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler
Section: The Red-Headed League
A pawnbroker named Jabez Wilson consults Holmes about a bizarre organisation that paid him handsomely to copy out the encyclopaedia - until it dissolved without explanation. Holmes recognises the scheme as a pretext to keep Wilson away from his shop while his assistant, the criminal John Clay, dug a tunnel to the bank vault next door. The story is a masterclass in misdirection: the most absurd premise in the canon conceals one of the most practical crimes.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Jabez Wilson, John Clay
Section: A Case of Identity
A young woman consults Holmes about her vanished fiance, Hosmer Angel, who disappeared on the morning of their wedding. Holmes solves it almost immediately: Angel was the woman's stepfather in disguise, courting her under a false identity to ensure she never married and he could continue to draw on her income. One of the few cases where Holmes identifies the culprit but cannot act - no crime has been committed, and the victim would not believe the truth.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes·Mentioned: Irene Adler
Section: The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Holmes and Watson travel to Boscombe Valley to investigate a murder where the evidence points squarely at the victim's son. Holmes reads the crime scene - footprints, a discarded stone, the positioning of the body - and identifies the true killer: the victim's neighbour, whose past as a bushranging highway robber in Australia gave the dead man leverage for years of blackmail. The case turns on colonial violence following men home to respectable English lives.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lestrade
Section: The Five Orange Pips
A young man seeks Holmes's help after receiving five orange pips in the post - the same warning that preceded the deaths of his uncle and father. Holmes identifies the threat as originating from the Ku Klux Klan, connected to papers the uncle brought back from America, and advises immediate compliance. But the client is killed before Holmes can act. It is one of the rare cases Holmes counts as a failure, and one of the few where the villains escape justice - though not, as it happens, the sea.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Man with the Twisted Lip
Watson stumbles upon Holmes in an opium den, both men there for different reasons. The case concerns a respectable City man who vanished from a window above the den, leaving only a coat weighted with coins in the Thames and a disfigured beggar in his place. Holmes spends a night smoking through the problem and arrives at the answer: the missing man and the beggar are the same person, a journalist who discovered he could earn more money begging than writing. The solution is social comedy rather than crime.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
A lost hat and a Christmas goose lead Holmes to the Countess of Morcar's stolen blue carbuncle, found in the bird's crop. Holmes traces the gem's journey backwards through London's markets and boarding houses to identify the real thief - not the plumber wrongly arrested, but a hotel employee who hid the stone inside a goose and then lost track of it. Holmes lets the thief go, reasoning that prison would only harden him, and the season calls for mercy.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Mrs Hudson·Mentioned: Irene Adler
Section: The Adventure of the Speckled Band
A young woman consults Holmes fearing she will die as her sister did - in mysterious circumstances, in a locked room, with only the words "speckled band" to explain it. Holmes examines the bedroom and notices a dummy bell-rope, a ventilator connecting to the stepfather's room, and a saucer of milk. He and Watson keep vigil that night and Holmes strikes at the thing that comes down the rope - a venomous snake, trained by Roylott to kill his stepdaughters before their marriages would cost him their income. The snake, struck and enraged, returns to its master and kills him instead. Often cited as the finest story in the canon.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Mrs Hudson, Grimesby Roylott
Section: The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
Watson treats a young hydraulic engineer whose thumb has been severed, and brings him to Holmes. Victor Hatherley was hired to repair a press at a country house, realised too late it was being used for counterfeiting, and barely escaped with his life when the press was turned on him. Holmes traces the house but arrives to find it burning, the counterfeiters fled. One of the few cases Watson brings to Holmes, and one where the criminals escape entirely.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
Lord Robert St Simon's bride vanishes on their wedding day. Holmes deduces from a note found by Lestrade that the bride had a previous husband - an American believed killed by Apaches - who reappeared at the ceremony. Holmes locates the couple and reunites them with St Simon, who leaves Baker Street upset and still a bachelor. A slight case, but one that demonstrates Holmes's sympathy running naturally toward the Americans rather than the aristocrat.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lestrade
Section: The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
A banker entrusts Holmes with finding three missing beryls from a royal coronet used as collateral for a loan. His own son was found holding the damaged coronet and arrested. Holmes reads footprints in the snow and deduces that the banker's niece passed the coronet to her lover through a window; the son caught them and tried to wrestle it back, breaking it in the process. He accepted blame to protect his cousin. Holmes recovers the stones from a pawnbroker for four thousand pounds.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Violet Hunter consults Holmes about a governess position offering suspiciously high wages, with conditions that include cutting her hair and wearing a specific dress. Holmes advises her to take it and promises help if needed. She discovers she is being used to impersonate the employer's daughter - kept prisoner in a locked wing - to convince the daughter's fiance that she has gone abroad. Holmes and Watson arrive to free the prisoner, but the employer sets his mastiff on them; Watson kills the dog, but too late to prevent it savaging its master.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Violet Hunter