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The Hound of the Baskervilles

Arthur Conan Doyle · detective novel, 1902·5 hrs in the original·original at gutenberg.org
The 30‑second version5 hrs → 50 sec
  • The real threat is human, not supernatural: Stapleton, posing as a naturalist and passing his wife off as his sister, is a secret Baskerville heir who engineered Sir Charles's death by terrifying him with a large dog coated in luminous phosphorus, exploiting the old man's weak heart and belief in the family curse.
  • Holmes operates in secret: While Watson reports from Baskerville Hall, Holmes has been hiding on the moor in a prehistoric stone hut all along, gathering evidence independently so as not to alert Stapleton to his presence.
  • The trap and its near-disaster: Holmes uses Sir Henry as live bait, sending him alone to dine at Merripit House, but a thick fog nearly ruins the plan and the hound attacks Sir Henry before Holmes and Watson can shoot it dead.
  • Stapleton's fate: After the hound is killed, Stapleton flees into the Grimpen Mire at night and is swallowed by the bog, his body never recovered, while his abused wife survives and helps guide the investigators to his island hideout.
  • The retrospective explanation: Holmes reconstructs the entire scheme in the final chapter, revealing that Stapleton was the illegitimate son of Sir Charles's younger brother Rodger, that he had manipulated Laura Lyons into luring Sir Charles to the gate on the night of his death, and that his wife had tried repeatedly to warn Sir Henry despite living in fear of her husband.
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•Why it earns a slot

The novel is the most celebrated Sherlock Holmes case, introducing the Dartmoor setting and the phosphorus-painted hound device that fuse rational detection with Gothic atmosphere in a way no other Holmes story matches.

When the heir to the Baskerville estate arrives in England under the shadow of a family curse involving a spectral hound, Sherlock Holmes sends Dr. Watson to Dartmoor to investigate while secretly following himself. The villain turns out to be a Baskerville descendant named Stapleton who has trained a real, phosphorus-daubed hound to terrorize and kill the family's heirs so he can inherit the fortune. Holmes springs a trap using Sir Henry as bait, the hound is shot dead, and Stapleton flees into the Grimpen Mire and is never seen again.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.

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