The Final Problem
Complete textWatson recounts a dangerous period in which Sherlock Holmes confronts Professor Moriarty and the criminal network associated with him. Travel and disguise replace the familiar rhythm of a domestic consultation. Holmes’s efforts to stay ahead of pursuit force Watson to interpret plans whose full scope he does not know.
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The retrospective voice places personal attachment beside the detective’s usual intellectual confidence. Watson writes from grief and a wish to correct the record, so the account’s emotional purpose is explicit. Follow how departures, changes of appearance, and indirect messages control knowledge, and how friendship affects what the narrator notices and what he can bear to describe.
Reading focus
Follow the pursuit through Watson’s retrospective account, where a detective’s strategies become inseparable from his friend’s fear and loyalty.
This reading edition contains 7,159 words in 1 original section. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an incoherent and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I have endeavoured to give some account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance which first brought us together at the period of the “Study in Scarlet,” up to the time of his interference in the matter of the “Naval Treaty”—an interference which had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international complication. It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created…
Contents
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Is this the complete The Final Problem?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 1 section and 7,159 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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