The Hound of the Baskervilles

This was the first ‘grown-up’ book I ever read. I was seven. I can still remember the green Penguin Books cover and the smell of old paper that accompanied it. I immediately became captivated by Sherlock Holmes and this mystery on the lonely moors. I still get goosebumps when I read that line, “Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of an enormous hound!” Yikes! 

I love Holmes’s brilliance and his friendship with ‘my friend and colleague, Dr Watson.’ I love his wry sense of humor, his untidy habits, and his Victorian manners. I’m a grandmother now, and I still love… show more.

Bit of a cheat, but this is my favorite book, which I re-read every year or so. That being the case, it has to count in my top three books I’ve read this year.

No introduction is needed, but I’ll give it one for those under a rock.

Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate the curious case of a Devonshire baronet, dead of a heart attack on the moors. Curious thanks to legends of a monstrous spectral hound which stalks the moors.

Holmes is far too busy, so he dispatches Watson to accompany the new baronet to his ancestral home,… show more.

I love the supernatural element to this much-loved murder mystery.

This mystery pushes against the constraints of Knox’s Ten Commandments for detective fiction by involving the supernatural, but the Commandments are never wholly transgressed. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle drew on the folklore of Devon where the book is set.

He drew on the legend of the cursed squire of Buckfastleigh and a hellhound, a variant of the local Yeth hound, a spectral black dog. The folklore infuses the mystery with a ghostly and altogether wonderful hinterland. Dartmoor becomes a liminal space where the living and the dead are mingled. Conan… show more.

No list of Victorian mysteries would be complete without a tip of the deerstalker to Doyle and the most famous character in fiction, consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. 

The Hound, a novel rather than a short story as are so many of the other Holmes stories, is especially atmospheric, drawing on the legends and the dark and brooding ambiance of Dartmoor as well as tales of the supernatural. It makes for some spine-tingling moments and a chance for Holmes to show off his finely honed powers of deduction. 

What, you don’t have time to read it? As fun as it is,… show more.

I first read this as a young teenager hooked on Sherlock Holmes by my Latin master. The book is filled with tension and I could visualise the wilds of Dartmoor (having visited on holiday many times). I imagined being alone on one of those tiny roads that cross the moor and hearing the howl of a large dog getting nearer and nearer. Real enough that you want to hide under the bedclothes. I love a clean read: no swearing, no sex, very little blood and gore. This book ticks all the boxes, and despite its age, for anyone who likes… show more.