The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle's First Holmes Short Story Collection

Dec 27, 2008

Scandal, treachery and crime are rife in London but villains beware, as Sherlock Holmes would say, 'the game is afoot'.

Created by Scottish author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant London-based consulting detective, famous for his intellectual prowess and powers of deductive reasoning.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the first of Conan Doyle’s short story collections and features twelve mysterious tales:

Holmes is approached by the King of Bohemia to retrieve a compromising photograph of himself with opera singer Irene Adler. Adler has threatened to make the photograph public and, since she will not accept a bribe from the king, Sherlock Holmes has to adopt a number of cunning disguises in an effort to get the better of the lady.

The Red-Headed League

London pawnbroker Jabez Wilson answered a job advertisement offering work to only red-haired male applicants and was engaged in a well clerical job. One day, Wilson arrived at work to find a sign informing him that his employer, the Red-Headed League, had been dissolved. Wilson asks Sherlock Holmes to unravel the mystery of his employment by the League.

A Case of Identity

Miss Mary Sutherland, a rather unprepossessing woman of substantial financial means, employs Holmes to track down her missing fiancée, the secretive Hosmer Angel.

Sherlock Holmes is called to Boscombe Valley to investigate the death of Charles McCarthy. The police have concluded that McCarthy was murdered and have arrested his, James, for the crime. According to Holmes, however, the facts do not fit.

In 1869 Elias Openshaw suddenly relocated back to England from the USA where he had served as a Colonel in the Confederate Army. His nephew, John, frequently visited Openshaw at his house but never entered the locked room where his uncle stored his trunks. In 1883 Elias Openshaw received a letter from India inscribed with only KKK and containing five orange pips. Openshaw began acting irrationally and, two months after the letter arrived, he was found dead in a garden pool. His nephew wants Holmes’ help to solve the mystery his uncle’s death.

The Man with the Twisted Lip

Sherlock Holmes must infiltrate an opium den in order to solve the disappearance of Neville St. Clair, a respectable and reliable country business whose wife is convinced he has met with some harm.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

After a precious blue carbuncle goes missing, suspicion fall on John Horner, a plumber who was seemingly the only person in the suite of the Countess of Morcar when the gem disappeared.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Helen Stoner consults Sherlock Holmes about the suspicious death of her sister, Julia. Julia was due to be married but, after an evening spent discussing the wedding, she staggered into her sisters room clutching her neck and gasped out the words ‘speckled band’ before she died. Helen Stoner is now engaged herself and is worried about her own safety.

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb

Victor Hatherley accepts a lucrative job repairing a hydraulic press at an isolated house. However, after examining the press, Hatherley realised that it is not used for fuller’s earth and he narrowly escaped death when the press was unexpectedly switched on, leaving him no choice but to jump from a window to make his escape, severing his thumb in the process.

The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor

Lord St. Simon needs Holmes’ help to track down his new bride, Hatty Doran, who disappeared on the afternoon of their wedding day.

The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet

Alexander Holder gives a £50, 000 loan to a client and receives the Beryl Coronet as security. He decides to take the Coronet home to lock in his personal safe but wake in the night to find his son, Arthur, with the Coronet in his hands, apparently trying to bend it. Three beryls are missing from it. In a panic, Holder seeks the help of Sherlock Holmes.

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

Holmes’ advice is sought by Violet Hunter as to whether she should accept a governess job, a job which comes with a number of odd conditions.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was followed by the second of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short story collections, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The copyright of the article The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Detective Fiction is owned by Erin Britton. Permission to republish The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.