After falling in love with the reimagining of Sherlock Holmes in the BBC’s Sherlock, I decided to finally read the original Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve read a handful for the short stories, but never any of the longer ones.
The book begins, as so many of the Holmes stories, with a visitor stopping by 221B Baker Street with an unusual problem. In this cases, it’s the somewhat mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville, an elderly man living in an ancestral estate on Dartmoor. The coroner rules that Baskerville died of a heart attack, but the visitor–Dr. Mortimer–to Baker Street also points out that Baskerville was living in terror of an old family story about a hellish hound that killed on of his more notorious ancestors. Mortimer also points out that he saw several large canine footprints near Sir Charles’s body, though there were no marks on the body. Mortimer posits that Sir Charles died of fear. (Interestingly, there is a phenomena in medicine called the Baskerville effect, which states that heart attacks are more likely to be fatal if the victim is also under a lot of psychological stress.) The next day, Mortimer returns with Sir Charles’s heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, who has been warned to stay away from Baskerville Hall if he values his life. Holmes agrees to take on the case, but from a distance, and dispatches Watson to Baskerville hall to serve as a bodyguard for Sir Henry.
Holmes actually spends a lot of time offstage in this book. Watson does a lot of the leg work, actually, traveling around the village and surrounding moor, questioning various parties. It becomes clear that there really is something going on after there are a couple of attempts on Sir Henry’s life and the death of an escaped prisoner (who the murderer mistook for Sir Henry). Towards the end of the book, Watson tracks down a man he suspects might be the murderer or the recently escaped convict that’s been roaming the moors. It turns out to be Holmes, who–of course–has pieced together a lot of the mystery already. The story ends with a rather thrilling trap, set by Holmes, almost ruined by the inopportune arrival of some extremely dense fog.
Even with Holmes out of the picture for most of the book, I rather enjoyed The Hound of the Baskervilles. Holmes, the original, works best in small doses. His sarcasm and ruthlessness would probably make any reader hate him if he was the narrator. But then, Holmes is one of those paradoxical characters that you know would drive you crazy if they actually existed yet still manage to inspire fierce loyalty around them. Thinking about it now, Lisbeth Salander reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe its because, underneath layers of prickly psychological baggage, their friends know that Holmes and Salander would do anything for them if they got in trouble, so they return the favor. So even though Holmes abuses Watson’s good nature in The Hound of the Baskervilles, it only takes a few pages before he’s forgiven.