May Pick (Book Drop Day 2025)
Mystery Novel
Welcome to Reading Revisited, a place for friends to enjoy some good old-fashioned book chat while revisiting the truth, beauty, and goodness we’ve found in our favorite books.
Reading Revisited provides a great book list each year. We also have a fun podcast. But, our greatest offering is our in person (or virtual) book clubs. We’d love you to join one for free! Here’s what one of our members has to say…
There are few pleasures to be compared with the snug, solitary enjoyment of a favorite book; until you find another soul to share it with, then whole worlds of comparison and conversation open up.
If by some misfortune you don’t happen to like the book, perhaps an insight will convert you.
If not, or if you didn’t read the book, you can still enjoy pleasant conversations of “shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—and cabbages—and kings,” not to mention floor installation, door hanging, water filtration systems, gardening, homeschooling, etc.
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If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that we follow the Norwegian tradition1 of reading mystery novels during/around Easter season.
Some of our previous mystery/detective fiction picks include2:
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (RR 2025)
The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton (RR 2024)
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (RR 2023)
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (RR 2022)
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (RR 2021)
This year we are very excited to continue this tradition with our May mystery novel: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
This read is doubly exciting for me (
, your guide for this book) as it combines my two favorite literary genres: the gothic novel and detective fiction! Though Sherlock Holmes is by all accounts a household name, this novel (technically the third of the four novels featuring the detective) is a great way to get to know the detective and his world. I look forward to diving into this classic work of detective fiction with you all!
Check out what some fellow Substack writers had to say about our May read-along:
From
of “School of the Uncomformed”:
The name Sherlock Holmes seems so familiar to us that we may feel that we know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective without ever having read one of his mysteries. Yet when I revisited the first few chapters of The Hound of the Baskervilles today, reading aloud to my youngest, I was reminded of the masterful storytelling that has made it one of the most widely read stories of all time. The author conceived of this “Victorian creeper” plot after being regaled with legends of demonic hounds while on a golfing holiday in Devon and rendered these seeds of historic folklore into a tale of suspenseful horror. As the story was initially published as a serial, each chapter ends in an unbearable cliffhanger, ever increasing the ominous tension. The Victorian language, rather than impeding the story, layers a rich, precise meaning to conversations and plot, and even managed to fill me with little thrills of joy at the mot juste.
It was one of the first stories that my husband Peco and I read aloud together, from a beautiful leather-bound edition that he had bought with his pocket money as a twelve-year old, because even as a young boy he knew that the tales of Sherlock Holmes were a treasure to invest in. Our teenage son has been reading Conan Doyle’s stories to clear his head and train his attention, cracking open his favourite volume over breakfast.
If you’ve only encountered Sherlock Holmes in cultural references or film, I highly recommend that you delve into the original that made readers shudder with suspense and still has the same power today. Just as we need to read Dickens to understand the transformation of Scrooge from misanthropy to magnanimity, we need to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to experience Sherlock Holmes’ mysterious suspense and masterful sleuthing. And there is no better place to start than with The Hound of the Baskervilles.
From
of “Study the Great Books”
Everyone knows the name of Sherlock Holmes. He is indisputably the most famous fictional detective in the world. As great as Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, and Hercule Poirot are, they are still sadly unknown by name to a great many and even when someone makes the case that one of these or some other literary sleuth is more admirable, interesting, or enjoyable, it is telling that they make their case in full awareness that Sherlock Holmes is the standard against which all other fictional detectives are to be measured. Sherlock is to detective fiction as Babe Ruth is to baseball or Socrates is to Philosophy; absolutely legendary. So popular, in fact, is the character which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created that Doyle considered Sherlock to have ruined his more serious aspirations as a writer. Doyle wanted to be known for other things besides his detective fiction and he wrote some other incredible works such as The White Company and its sequel Sir Nigel (historical fiction from the time of the Hundred Years’ War). Though these, and other pieces by Doyle, were well received on the whole, they simply didn’t hold a candle (as far as sales were concerned) to anything that bore the name of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle went so far, in his desperation to distance himself from Sherlock, that he actually killed off the character in the story entitled The Final Problem (published in 1893) and fully intended to never write another Sherlock story.
Despite his, undoubtedly, genuine desire to move away from Sherlock Holmes his fans relentlessly hounded Doyle for more. Given that his other books were not selling as well as he might have hoped, and given the baying of the British populace for more of the world’s greatest detective, Doyle attempted to give them a piece of what they desired without fully committing to a resurrection of the hero. Using the typical device of Dr. John Watson as the record keeper of the cases of Sherlock, Doyle gave the people what they wanted by telling a previously untold tale which was supposed to have taken place at some time prior to the death of Sherlock when he fell with his arch nemesis, professor James Moriarty, into the Reichenbach Falls. This throwing of a bone to his ravenous fans came in the form of the story entitled, The Hound of the Baskervilles which was published in serial form from 1901-1902 and eventually published as a complete novel later in 1902.
After several more years of only moderate success with his other literary endeavors, and with the continual and unwavering commitment of the Sherlock community, Doyle finally gave in and wrote The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1905. He would, in fact, go on to write the majority of the total body of Sherlock Holmes stories after this great return of the hero. To this day Sherlock Holmes remains a wildly popular figure and has inspired innumerable other stories, movies, and television shows. The enthusiasm for the dynamic duo of 221 B Baker Street doesn’t show any sign of dying out anytime soon.
Of all of the great short stories and novels by Doyle, featuring Sherlock, my favorite will always be the one I read first. My first time reading a Sherlock story stands out clear as a bell in my mind. I was a part-time youth minister in a Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas and I was also working part-time as a maintenance man in a retirement home. Those who know me know how laughable it is that I ever had the latter job. I had just gotten what, at the time, was an amazing new gadget, a PalmOne Treo, which looked something like this:
It was upon this cutting-edge device that I downloaded my first ever E-book, The Hound of the Baskervilles. To be honest, I was more excited about the prospect of reading a book on my sleek new phone and less concerned, at first, with what book it was. Nevertheless, I was very quickly drawn into the story. Who would not be? With an ancient family curse in play, a ghastly hound from hell on the prowl, a mysterious bearded man dogging the steps of the new Lord of Baskerville Hall, servants in the mansion who aren’t behaving at all as they should, an unexplainable wailing in the night, and strange lights flickering upon the eeriest of all imaginable settings; the desolate moors of England.
Though it is not the first story in the Sherlock series, it is by no means a bad place to start. Probably the circumstances which led to the writing of this particular novel, being somewhat a-temporal in the series, makes it the at least the second best place to start reading Sherlock outside of the original story, A Study in Scarlet (1887), where the incorrigible detective and his dear Dr. Watson first revealed themselves to the world. I have since the time of first reading The Hound of the Baskervilles read (and/or listened to) all the rest of the Sherlock stories. Many of them I’ve returned to again and again, Still, I have always found this story to be my particular favorite. It has all of the familiar tropes of a typical Sherlock story from Sherlock’s hyper-observance of even the minutest details, to his cock-sure attitude which is simultaneously lovable and punchable, to the ego-building presence of his readily impressed sidekick who is always flabbergasted by Holmes seemingly supernatural powers of deduction. The story lives up to all the things you would expect to find in a story about the legendary detective while still managing to deliver a story in which you don’t know what will happen next.
If you are new to reading detective fiction, you really ought to start with Sherlock. If you aren’t an absolute chronological purist, I would commend to you The Hound of the Baskervilles as the most enjoyable of all of Doyle’s Sherlock stories. I am certain, if you have any just sentiments or sense of adventure in you at all, you will not be sorry to head out on the moor with Sherlock and Watson to see if you can help keep Sir Henry Baskerville alive to see another day.
Tentative Schedule:
Wednesday, April 22nd: Introduction and Schedule
Monday, April 27th: ep. ##: Intro to The Hound of the Baskervilles
Wednesday, April 29th: Read Along Guide 1
Wednesday, May 6th: Read Along Guide 2
Wednesday, May 13th: Read Along Guide 3
Thursday, May 28th: The Hound of the Baskervilles Virtual Book Club
Monday, June 1st: ep. ##: Revisiting The Hound of the Baskervilles
Next up we will announce our a play…
Check out the previous Book Drop Day Posts:
Welcome to Book Drop Day
September (Book About Books)
October (American Classic)
November (Gothic Novel)
December Part 1 (Book About Poetry)
December Part 2 (Book of Poetry)
January (Shakespeare)
February-April (Long Book)
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
In Case You Missed It:
On the Podcast:
ep. 55: Introduction to Trust and Contemporary Novels w/
Sean Johnson
ep. 57: Bookish Bio of Griffin Gooch (a Bookish PhD Student)
ep. 58: One Year Anniversary of the Reading Revisited Podcast
What We’re Reading Now/Next:
June
Trust by Hernan Diaz
July
Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
August
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
A Few Reminders:
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How appropriate after our last book pick!
 | A guest post by
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 | A guest post by
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Andrew actually guessed this when I asked for his guesses-and Sherlock was my introduction to the genre of detective fiction; I asked for the complete series (which I got in a gorgeous set) for Christmas in high school when I was trying to do “great books” sort of on my own. And I’m so glad I tried him out!
One of my favorites!!