After watching the Sherlock BBC Miniseries (my review), I decided to re-read the original Sherlock Holmes stories. And what better one to start with than Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s an interesting book because of not only the style that it was written in, but also because Sherlock Holmes is not even in the majority of the book. That’s a challenge to any author who has a popular character, that the public is clamoring to see, and to get a hugely popular book that hides the character for large swathes of the book.

In addition, this was a missing Sherlock Holmes story. Doyle killed off Holmes in 1893 at the end of the story “The Final Problem” (collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes), and this was the first Holmes story since his death. But this story was set at a time before his death and then published in 1902. Doyle had wanted to write other things, but felt that Holmes was keeping him from doing so. This book was Doyle’s return to Sherlock Holmes and led to Holmes actually returning the following couple of years.

So, what is the mystery to be solved?

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