What do you think?
Rate this book
Sherlock Holmes: The Dark Mysteries
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a lasting interest in the supernatural, and Sherlock Holmes expert David Stuart Davies has selected those Holmes and Watson cases that reflect this. The first is that classic novella, the terrifying The Hound of the Baskervilles, followed by nine Gothic adventures: The Sussex Vampire, The Creeping Man, Shoscombe Old Place, The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, The Veiled Lodger, The Devil’s Foot, The Blanched Soldier, and The Cardboard Box, all with the original illustrations.
Illustrated by Sidney Paget and others, the illustrators of the original stories in The Strand Magazine.
With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies, writer and editor.
Illustrated by Sidney Paget and others, the illustrators of the original stories in The Strand Magazine.
With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies, writer and editor.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1893
16 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Conan Doyle
15.8k books24.4k followersSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.
Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.
Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 12, 2015
Vampires, hounds and lunatics...
This pocket-sized little book is published by the Collector's Library and contains some of the darkest of the Holmes stories. There is an interesting introduction by David Stuart Davies, himself a writer of crime and ghost stories, and an authority on Holmes. Apparently he has also written six Holmes novels himself. He reminds us of Conan Doyle's interest in things not of this world as a great advocate of Spiritualism, and has selected stories that show Conan Doyle's flair for going close to the edge of the supernatural, though in the Holmes stories the solution is always ultimately based in the rational world.
The book kicks off with the long story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, probably the most popular of all the Holmes tales. This is Conan Doyle's writing at its finest, a thrilling tale with a dramatic setting amidst the mists and mires of Dartmoor, and a terrifying climax as Holmes and Watson finally face the hound that has been the curse of the Baskerville family for generations. Then there are seven of the short stories, all either with an element of the supernatural or with particularly dark and brutal storylines.
The Sussex Vampire – when a woman is found apparently sucking blood from her own baby and will give no explanation, her frantic husband applies to Holmes for help. What Holmes discovers reveals a very human darkness at the heart of this family, perhaps more frightening than had the woman truly been a vampire.
The Creeping Man – An elderly man who has fallen in love with a young woman starts exhibiting strange and frightening behaviour and seems to have acquired almost superhuman strength and agility. I must admit this is probably my least favourite of all the Holmes stories because it's so far-fetched. That's because the scientific explanation seems so ridiculous. However Davies points out that there were experiments of this nature going on in real life at the time, so the story probably seemed much more credible to contemporary readers.
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place – a Gothic tale of crypts and corpses, greed and deception, this has definite elements of the horror story about it. The credibility might be a bit over-stretched but Conan Doyle's writing just about carries it off.
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax – Lady Frances Carfax is alone and friendless, a perfect victim for any unscrupulous conman who wants to get hold of her property. Definitely a horror story this one, with a burial scene of Poe-like terror. And a very nice bit of detection too.
The Veiled Lodger – there's no detection in this one, as Holmes is simply the recipient of the secret behind the tragedy that befell the lodger of the title. Mrs Ronder and her husband were circus folk, lion-tamers... until it all went horribly and gruesomely wrong. Betrayal, brutality and cowardice are at the heart of this story – and it's one example of Conan Doyle's tendency to have Holmes leave punishment of wickedness to a higher power.
The Devil's Foot – one evening, a man leaves his two brothers and his sister happily playing cards together. The next morning, the two men are stark, raving mad and the woman is dead, with a look of utter terror etched on her face. When I first read Holmes at around the age of ten, this story frightened the bejabers out of me, and I still find it the most truly horrifying of them all. The image of those grinning mad men being carted off to the asylum lives in my nightmares, and the scene where Holmes and Watson come close to losing their own senses is both scary and moving, as one of the rare occasions when Holmes reveals his deep affection for loyal old Watson.
The Cardboard Box – the last story in the book is another that planted itself firmly in my mind from first reading and refused to go away. A woman receives a box in the mail and when she opens it, she finds it contains two freshly cut human ears – but not from the same body! Betrayal and brutality again, combined with the demon drink, are the cause of this horror. But, just as a little piece of advice, if you ever want to send body parts through the post, make sure you have the right address...
The book itself is rather gorgeous. It's only just over 4” by 6” so the pages are tiny, which explains why there are over 450 of them. The font is pretty small too, but very clear, and some of the original illustrations are included. Beneath the rather lovely sleeve, the cover itself is of dark red cloth with the title on the spine in gilt, and is beautifully tactile. With the finishing touches of gilt edged pages and a red ribbon bookmark, this would make a perfect gift, especially for someone just being introduced to the Holmes stories. Though even although I know the stories so well and have at least three copies of the full adventures, I still found this a little delight and enjoyed reading the stories grouped in this way. A most pleasing little volume.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Collector's Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
This pocket-sized little book is published by the Collector's Library and contains some of the darkest of the Holmes stories. There is an interesting introduction by David Stuart Davies, himself a writer of crime and ghost stories, and an authority on Holmes. Apparently he has also written six Holmes novels himself. He reminds us of Conan Doyle's interest in things not of this world as a great advocate of Spiritualism, and has selected stories that show Conan Doyle's flair for going close to the edge of the supernatural, though in the Holmes stories the solution is always ultimately based in the rational world.
The book kicks off with the long story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, probably the most popular of all the Holmes tales. This is Conan Doyle's writing at its finest, a thrilling tale with a dramatic setting amidst the mists and mires of Dartmoor, and a terrifying climax as Holmes and Watson finally face the hound that has been the curse of the Baskerville family for generations. Then there are seven of the short stories, all either with an element of the supernatural or with particularly dark and brutal storylines.
The Sussex Vampire – when a woman is found apparently sucking blood from her own baby and will give no explanation, her frantic husband applies to Holmes for help. What Holmes discovers reveals a very human darkness at the heart of this family, perhaps more frightening than had the woman truly been a vampire.
The Creeping Man – An elderly man who has fallen in love with a young woman starts exhibiting strange and frightening behaviour and seems to have acquired almost superhuman strength and agility. I must admit this is probably my least favourite of all the Holmes stories because it's so far-fetched. That's because the scientific explanation seems so ridiculous. However Davies points out that there were experiments of this nature going on in real life at the time, so the story probably seemed much more credible to contemporary readers.
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place – a Gothic tale of crypts and corpses, greed and deception, this has definite elements of the horror story about it. The credibility might be a bit over-stretched but Conan Doyle's writing just about carries it off.
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax – Lady Frances Carfax is alone and friendless, a perfect victim for any unscrupulous conman who wants to get hold of her property. Definitely a horror story this one, with a burial scene of Poe-like terror. And a very nice bit of detection too.
The Veiled Lodger – there's no detection in this one, as Holmes is simply the recipient of the secret behind the tragedy that befell the lodger of the title. Mrs Ronder and her husband were circus folk, lion-tamers... until it all went horribly and gruesomely wrong. Betrayal, brutality and cowardice are at the heart of this story – and it's one example of Conan Doyle's tendency to have Holmes leave punishment of wickedness to a higher power.
The Devil's Foot – one evening, a man leaves his two brothers and his sister happily playing cards together. The next morning, the two men are stark, raving mad and the woman is dead, with a look of utter terror etched on her face. When I first read Holmes at around the age of ten, this story frightened the bejabers out of me, and I still find it the most truly horrifying of them all. The image of those grinning mad men being carted off to the asylum lives in my nightmares, and the scene where Holmes and Watson come close to losing their own senses is both scary and moving, as one of the rare occasions when Holmes reveals his deep affection for loyal old Watson.
The Cardboard Box – the last story in the book is another that planted itself firmly in my mind from first reading and refused to go away. A woman receives a box in the mail and when she opens it, she finds it contains two freshly cut human ears – but not from the same body! Betrayal and brutality again, combined with the demon drink, are the cause of this horror. But, just as a little piece of advice, if you ever want to send body parts through the post, make sure you have the right address...
The book itself is rather gorgeous. It's only just over 4” by 6” so the pages are tiny, which explains why there are over 450 of them. The font is pretty small too, but very clear, and some of the original illustrations are included. Beneath the rather lovely sleeve, the cover itself is of dark red cloth with the title on the spine in gilt, and is beautifully tactile. With the finishing touches of gilt edged pages and a red ribbon bookmark, this would make a perfect gift, especially for someone just being introduced to the Holmes stories. Though even although I know the stories so well and have at least three copies of the full adventures, I still found this a little delight and enjoyed reading the stories grouped in this way. A most pleasing little volume.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Collector's Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
November 11, 2015
It’s sometimes hard to believe that a devout spiritualist is the mind behind one of the greatest rational brains fiction has ever known. But it’s true. Sherlock Holmes seemed to exist in a world apart from the one Arthur Conan Doyle believed he was living in. In the end, that’s part of what makes the creation of the great detective so remarkable. Conan Doyle was able to step outside of himself to craft another person so real that people still write to 221B Baker Street to ask for Holmes’s help.
But there are still times in which Sherlock Holmes comes close to the world Conan Doyle believed existed, times when the separation of the supernatural and the natural seemed blurred. This collection gathers those stories together.
It all starts with possibly the most well-known Sherlock Holmes adventure: “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” The mystery revolves around a supposed curse on the Baskerville family in which a devil hound comes to bring death upon head of the household. I’ve read it before and, once again, I was struck by the imagery of the moor, so dark and ominous, and how close they all are to living the superstitious life of the caveman whose dwellings still littered the described landscape. This story probably best achieves the slide into the otherworldly, that faint hint that Holmes’s rational domain may not be all that’s out there.
Other stories follow, most of them after Holmes’s “death” at Reichenbach. They include the likes of “The Sussex Vampire” and “The Veiled Lodger.” They mostly follow the horror route, leaning towards the gruesome rather than the supernatural: The disfigured face, the mummified corpse, the severed ear. The worst of it happens to women, making the events, to the Victorian mind, all the more horrific. What villain would stoop this low to do that to an innocent and helpless woman? Sometimes Conan Doyle is so much a part of his time that it’s painful.
While each entertaining in their own right, these other stories could never stack up to “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in quality or in tone. None could achieve the same relationship with the supernatural. But that makes sense if you think about it. After all, despite his own beliefs, Conan Doyle wasn’t a fantasy writer, at least when it came to the ever-rational Sherlock Holmes.
But there are still times in which Sherlock Holmes comes close to the world Conan Doyle believed existed, times when the separation of the supernatural and the natural seemed blurred. This collection gathers those stories together.
It all starts with possibly the most well-known Sherlock Holmes adventure: “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” The mystery revolves around a supposed curse on the Baskerville family in which a devil hound comes to bring death upon head of the household. I’ve read it before and, once again, I was struck by the imagery of the moor, so dark and ominous, and how close they all are to living the superstitious life of the caveman whose dwellings still littered the described landscape. This story probably best achieves the slide into the otherworldly, that faint hint that Holmes’s rational domain may not be all that’s out there.
Other stories follow, most of them after Holmes’s “death” at Reichenbach. They include the likes of “The Sussex Vampire” and “The Veiled Lodger.” They mostly follow the horror route, leaning towards the gruesome rather than the supernatural: The disfigured face, the mummified corpse, the severed ear. The worst of it happens to women, making the events, to the Victorian mind, all the more horrific. What villain would stoop this low to do that to an innocent and helpless woman? Sometimes Conan Doyle is so much a part of his time that it’s painful.
While each entertaining in their own right, these other stories could never stack up to “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in quality or in tone. None could achieve the same relationship with the supernatural. But that makes sense if you think about it. After all, despite his own beliefs, Conan Doyle wasn’t a fantasy writer, at least when it came to the ever-rational Sherlock Holmes.
November 14, 2021
The Veiled Lodger and The Devil's Foot really stand out for me, I guess it's because of their sad nature. It's lovely to come back to these characters.
February 4, 2025
Multiples stories of Sherlock Holmes’s, with different lengths making it easy to read and letting you multiple choice for the chosen stories.
It’s a small book making it easy to transport.
The stories on themselves are big cases of Sherlock Holmes’s (like the hound of Baskerville) and are mostly about supernatural (well if you know Sherlock well there’s always a rational explanation ;) )
I totally recommend for the variety and price! And it’s obviously very well written like always !
It’s a small book making it easy to transport.
The stories on themselves are big cases of Sherlock Holmes’s (like the hound of Baskerville) and are mostly about supernatural (well if you know Sherlock well there’s always a rational explanation ;) )
I totally recommend for the variety and price! And it’s obviously very well written like always !
July 18, 2025
Sherlock, as always, did not disappoint.
Although I have to admit it was one of the first books from Sherlock Holmes’ adventures I have read, this is exactly what I have expected to get and I couldn’t be more satisfied. Provided the required amount of deduction, tobacco smoke and psycho-genius.
Although I have to admit it was one of the first books from Sherlock Holmes’ adventures I have read, this is exactly what I have expected to get and I couldn’t be more satisfied. Provided the required amount of deduction, tobacco smoke and psycho-genius.
March 27, 2017
Have read all of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and probably others as well, just never bothered to put them in to amazon or goodreads, so dates wrong. Some KU some paperback some hardback some collections.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews