A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression on his face.

“Queer place, the moor!” said he.

“But what is it?”

“The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I’ve heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud.”

I looked round, with a chill fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us.

The origins of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book, The Hound of the Baskervilles, are fairly well known. When Doyle returned from medical service in the Boer War in 1901, he had not written a Sherlock Holmes story since 1893, when he killed the detective off for good and all (or so he thought) in The Final Problem. Doyle was tired of writing detective stories. He found them formulaic and uninspiring. But the public was still hungry for more, and, after a tour of Dartmoor with a journalist friend, he hit on a fresh kind of Holmes adventure. Technically he didn’t resurrect his character at that time – he set the story back in 1889, before his “death.” He seems to have been inspired by the legend of Squire Richard Cabell of Brook Hall in Devon, who was remembered as “a monstrously evil man.”

As the story begins, Holmes and Watson are visited by Dr. James Mortimer, who tells them the story of his late friend Sir Charles Baskerville of Baskerville Hall in Devonshire, who died (apparently) of fright on his country estate one night. Mortimer says that he himself observed the footprint of “a gigantic hound” near the body – and Sir Charles had been living in fear of a legendary hellhound said to haunt his family on account of the wicked deeds of one of their ancestors.

Now, Mortimer says, the new heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, is coming from Canada. Although, as a man of science, he has a hard time believing in demons, he is uneasy about Sir Henry’s safety, and wishes Holmes to help protect him. Shortly after Sir Henry’s arrival, he receives a sinister warning letter made of words cut out of a newspaper and pasted on paper, and Holmes also observes him being followed by a bearded man in a cab.

Nevertheless, Holmes claims prior commitments that prevent his traveling to Devon for the moment. Instead he sends Dr. Watson, with instructions to keep him informed of developments by letter.

What follows is a rather delicious gothic mystery, complete with a bleak setting on the moors, the baying of an unseen hound, the presence of a fugitive murderer, and a mysterious figure observed watching from a hilltop in the nighttime. It all leads to a headlong, shocking climax.

The Hound of the Baskervilles was the first Holmes story I ever read (my Aunt Midge gave me a copy when I was in junior high), and it made me an immediate – and lifelong – Holmes fan. I find it hard to believe that Doyle – in spite of his expressed weariness with his character – did not have fun writing it. If he was looking for a fresh approach to telling detective tales, he found it.

I might also mention (and this impressed me) that way back in 1902, Doyle (perhaps because he was a physician) had the sense (unlike a thousand mystery writers who came after him) to realize that the right way to break down a locked door is to kick it in with the sole of your foot, not slam your shoulder into it.