Those of you who were members of the Hounds last year will be familiar with the following information, but I’ll repeat it here for the newcomers. Back when the bar known as the Dangling Prussian Amateur Press Association was still open for business, the Hounds’ own Colonel Warburton conducted a poll of the patrons therein […]

For most of us, this is one of the least satisfying tales in the Sherlockian Canon. There isn’t much detecting for Holmes to do, and that’s lucky because the little bit of detecting that he does is totally off base. And to confuse us further, the Doubleday editors have done some damage to the text […]

With this story, we enter into the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, nearly one quarter of the way through our current Canonical round of discussion on the Hounds. And Silver Blaze is one of the great stories, isn’t it? Holmes is in top form as to both brilliance of mind and quirkiness of temperament. And of […]

It isn’t a mystery of the sort that Sherlock Holmes usually solves, nor did he “solve” the case in the traditional sense at all. But Violet Hunter could not have done better than to consult Holmes, a man who fully understood the dangers that might be concealed behind the walls of a country house, especially […]

Remember that touching and romantic scene at the end of The Sign of Four, when Watson and his beloved Mary rejoiced in the loss of the Agra treasure because it meant they could get married without besmirching his honor with the suspicion that he was a mere fortune hunter? Okay, now that you’ve remembered it, […]

Now let’s see if I’ve got this straight… you take the 11:15 train from Paddington to the non-existent village of Eyford, then drive about seven or maybe twelve miles to a weird, dark house that is just around the corner from the station you just left. Confused? So was Victor Hatherley, but who can blame […]

This is Sherlock Holmes at his best! He is kind and considerate to his client, poised and cool in the presence of the villain, and absolutely courageous in the face of danger. And what a danger! The awareness of it slithers in upon our minds: “A ventilator is made, a cord is hung, and a […]

The story opens with one of the longest sitting room scenes in the Canon, and one of the most enjoyable. What fun it is to see Holmes and Watson relaxing together in the holiday season, chatting about Henry Baker’s hat and how it came to Baker Street. Holmes seems to be in a particularly light-hearted […]

Like A Study in Scarlet, The Valley of Fear doesn’t merely fill in the motive for the present-day crime: it makes a novel within a novel out of past history. I’m not a big fan of the Study digression, but I found the story of Birdy Edwards to be quite exciting and enjoyable for its […]

Remember the first time you read The Hound of the Baskervilles? Remember how, even if you had seen one of the filmed versions first, the words on the printed page did so much more than pictures to evoke the wild setting, the eccentric and complex characters, and most of all, the eerie sense that the […]