The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Complete textWatson recounts a series of investigations beginning with the puzzling death of Ronald Adair and a renewed encounter with Holmes. Later cases bring coded messages, unusual appointments, missing people and apparently trivial objects into inquiries where an ordinary explanation is rarely the first available story.
Continue readingAbout The Return of Sherlock Holmes
As a collection, the book varies the point at which Watson gains access to crucial knowledge. Some cases begin with a client's account; others grow from an unexplained object or behavior. Comparing these openings reveals how Holmes decides which details deserve attention and when a familiar category is obstructing the investigation.
Reading focus
Compare how different cases begin and how Holmes distinguishes a useful anomaly from a client's distracting explanation.
This reading edition contains 112,344 words in 13 original sections. 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 was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation, but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all the facts. Only now, at the end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain. The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me…
Contents
All sections- THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE40 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER43 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN44 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST36 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL53 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF BLACK PETER37 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON31 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS38 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE STUDENTS30 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ41 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING THREE-QUARTER37 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE42 min
- THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN44 min
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This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 13 sections and 112,344 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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