Synopses & Reviews
The Hound of the Baskervilles is considered to be one of the greatest of the Sherlock Holmes stories and one of the greatest mystery novels ever written. While most of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories take the form of shorter narratives, readers will delight in the fact that The Hound of the Baskervilles is a full-length novel instead. At the center of this novel is the investigation of the murder of Sir Charles Baskerville. Could the ghost of the Hound of the Baskervilles, who as legend would have it, tore out the throat of Hugo Baskerville generations ago, have murdered Sir Charles? Or is the culprit a more earthly one? Discover along with Sherlock Holmes the true identity of the murderer.
Synopsis
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-02) is Arthur Conan Doyle's most celebrated Sherlock Holmes adventure. At the end of the yew tree path of his ancestral home, Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead. Close by are the footprints of a gigantic hound. Called to investigate, Holmes seems to face a supernatural foe. In the tense narration of the detective's efforts to solve the crime, Conan Doyle meditates on late Victorian and early twentieth-century ideas of ancestry and atavism, the possible biological determination of criminals, the stability of the British landed classes, and the place of the supernatural.
Historical documents included with this fully-annotated Broadview edition help contextualize the novel's debates and reveal its cultural and literary significance as a supreme instance of early detective fiction. Also included is the Conan Doyle short story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band."