The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters - Arthur Conan Doyle
Section: The Adventure of Silver Blaze
A champion racehorse disappears from Dartmoor and its trainer is found dead. Holmes and Watson travel down and Holmes solves both mysteries through details everyone else overlooks - a dog that did not bark, a surgical knife among the trainer's effects, and a bill for an expensive dress sent to a woman on the moor. The trainer was killed by his own horse while attempting to lame it, and the horse simply wandered to a neighbouring stable. Contains the most famous exchange in the canon: the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
A middle-aged woman receives a cardboard box containing two severed human ears preserved in salt. Holmes identifies the ears as belonging to two different people, traces the box through its knots and postal markings, and uncovers a story of jealousy, adultery, and murder at sea. Unusually dark for the series, and notable for Holmes's sombre reflection on the purposelessness of suffering - one of the rare moments where the detective allows himself to be affected by a case.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lestrade
Section: The Adventure of the Yellow Face
A suburban husband asks Holmes to explain his wife's secretive visits to a neighbouring cottage, where a strange figure with a livid yellow face watches from the window. Holmes constructs an elaborate theory involving the wife's first husband - and is completely wrong. The face belongs to the wife's mixed-race daughter from her first marriage, whom she has been visiting in secret, fearing her new husband's reaction. He embraces the child without hesitation. Holmes instructs Watson that if he ever grows overconfident, Watson need only whisper "Norbury" to bring him back to earth.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk
A young clerk is offered an impossibly good position at a Birmingham firm, on the condition that he cannot start his original new job in London. Holmes sees immediately that someone needs him kept away from the London office and deduces the scheme: the clerk's double is impersonating him to gain access to the firm's securities. They arrive in Birmingham to find the fake employer has attempted suicide, and the real crime has been prevented - but only just.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Gloria Scott
Holmes tells Watson about his very first case, brought to him as a university student by a friend whose father, a Norfolk justice of the peace, collapsed after reading a seemingly innocent note about fly-papers and hens. Holmes deciphers the hidden message - every third word spells out a threat - and the father confesses his past: he was a transported convict who seized the prison ship Gloria Scott during the voyage and built a new identity in England. The story that made Holmes realise detection could be a profession.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual
Holmes recounts another early case: a former university acquaintance discovers his butler performing the ancient Musgrave Ritual in secret and dismisses him, after which the butler and a housemaid both disappear. Holmes treats the ritual as a mathematical cipher, follows its directions across the estate, and locates a buried chamber containing the ancient crown of the Stuarts - and the butler's body, killed by the maid who sealed him in. A treasure hunt in the truest sense.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Reigate Squire
Holmes, recovering from overwork, is dragged into a local murder near his host's Surrey estate. A coachman was shot dead clutching a torn scrap of paper, and Holmes becomes fixated on the handwriting - two different hands composed the same note. He deduces that a father and son from the neighbouring estate collaborated on the murder to suppress evidence of a land dispute, each writing alternate words to prevent identification. Holmes tricks a confession from them by pretending to steal the matching fragment.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Crooked Man
A colonel is found dead in his locked study, his wife unconscious beside him, and the only clue is a strange animal's footprint. Holmes traces the wife's movements to a meeting with a disfigured former soldier - Henry Wood, once the colonel's rival for her affections. Decades earlier, the colonel had betrayed Wood to enemy forces in India, leaving him tortured and broken. Wood came to confront the colonel; the shock of seeing the man he had destroyed killed him. The animal was Wood's pet mongoose.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Resident Patient
A nervous doctor in Brook Street reports that his wealthy patron - who bankrolled his practice in exchange for a share of the profits - has become terrified after finding signs of intrusion in his rooms. Holmes visits but is too late: the patron is found hanged. Holmes determines it was murder disguised as suicide, carried out by men the patron had betrayed years earlier after a bank robbery. The story turns on the long memory of criminals and the impossibility of buying a new identity.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter
The story that introduces Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older and even more brilliant brother, who refers a case involving a Greek interpreter kidnapped and forced to help criminals communicate with a captive. Mycroft provides the key deductions from his armchair at the Diogenes Club - a place for men who wish to be alone - while Sherlock pursues the fieldwork. The criminals escape, though they are later reported murdered abroad. Notable primarily for establishing Mycroft and the principle that brilliance without energy is merely a parlour trick.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes
Section: The Adventure of the Naval Treaty
A Foreign Office clerk collapses after a vital naval treaty vanishes from his desk during a brief absence. Holmes takes the case weeks later, when the clerk's health and career are both in ruins, and recovers the treaty from under everyone's nose - it had never left the building. The thief is the clerk's own future brother-in-law, who saw an opportunity and hid the document in his bedroom. Holmes stages a theatrical reveal over breakfast, producing the treaty from under a dish-cover.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Mrs Hudson
Section: The Adventure of the Final Problem
Holmes arrives at Watson's practice in a state of agitation: Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime and the organiser of half the evil in London, has discovered that Holmes is closing in on his network. What follows is a flight across the Continent, Holmes and Watson fleeing while Moriarty pursues. At the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, Holmes meets Moriarty alone. Watson returns to find only a note: Holmes and Moriarty went over the falls together. Conan Doyle intended it as the final story. The public refused to accept it.
POV: Dr John H. Watson·On page: Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Professor James Moriarty