The Story
- Genre: mystery (with a bit of gloom)
- Form: novel
- From the Sherlock Holmes series, but it can be read as a standalone
- Reading time: 4h
- Published in 1902
- Status: in the public domain everywhere
- Read online for free at Standard EBooks
- Setting: It takes place in London and Dartmoor (Devonshire, UK) at the turn of the 20th century
- Premise: Dr Mortimer, a close friend of the late Charles Baskerville, who died in mysterious circumstances, pays a visit to Sherlock Holmes to tell him about the curse plaguing the Baskerville family. The new heir has just arrived in London, and Dr Mortimer fears for his life, because the legend has it that a fantastic beast haunts the moor around the estate and targets the Baskervilles. Sherlock doesn’t believe in the supernatural and takes on the case to find out what lies behind appearances. Dr Watson is to go first with Dr Mortimer to the isolated mansion to ensure the protection of the heir, Henry Baskerville, while Sherlock finishes off other cases and lays the grounds for this one. To complicate matters, a series of incidents occurs, which may or may not be connected to the case. Will Sherlock and Watson unravel this terrifying menace before it is too late?
A bleak setting
It is one of the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes adventures and one of the most read by Arthur Conan Doyle. However, this is not your typical Sherlock. The novel is at a crossroads between several genres: a mystery fiction with a dash of gothic, a gloomy atmosphere, and some of the urgency found in the thriller genre.
The setting is very uninviting. The Baskervilles’ Estate is on the misty moors in Devon, a place littered with the stone remnants of the Neolithic era, a cold and humid isolated country, hiding a dangerous bog.
It is also a place of folk legends and superstition at odds with the rationality of Sherlock Holmes’ mind.
Some people online feel there should be warnings about the content: animal cruelty, domestic violence and violent death by an animal. But it is just the length of a few sentences.
Close reading
I will be very vague to avoid spoiling, but for those who would like to slow read the book, you may want to pay attention to:
- How do the surroundings support the supernatural tales and superstition
- The discrepancy between rationality and beliefs
- How does this environment influence Watson, who may oscillate between a rational explanation and a supernatural one
- An accessory is not just an accessory, but a tool to understand the characters: the walking stick, the butterfly net, Sherlock Holmes’s pipe, etc.
- The concept of lineage, and how the deeds of the ancestors shadow the current heirs of the family
- The role played by the family paintings in the plot, in reinforcing the previous point, and in darkening the atmosphere in the mansion
