The Best And Worst Sherlock Holmes Stories

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most evergreen fictional characters ever created. First introduced to the world in 1887 by Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes' fastidious affect and unique detective style — utilizing observation and logic, often solving crimes simply by arranging clues in his mind — has kept him prominently in the public imagination ever since. Hardly a year goes by without some kind of adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, and plenty of modern-day fictional detectives owe a debt to the original gangster of intellectual sleuths.

Considering the enormous impact Holmes has had on pop culture, it's often surprising to realize Doyle only published four novels featuring the character. Holmes' true legacy is in the 56 short stories Doyle wrote about Holmes, stories that established not just Holmes and his assistant, Dr. Watson, as characters but also any number of detective fiction tropes and conventions.

As important and entertaining as Holmes is, however, not every one of these stories has stood the test of time. Yet, the best of the Holmes stories still seem fresh today and maintain their ability to surprise even the most attentive reader — without cheating. The worst of them, however, often feature some fairly shocking 19th-century attitudes (especially toward women and race) and even some pretty terrible mysteries. If you're just getting started with Sherlock Holmes, here are six of the best stories to read — and six you'd be better off avoiding.

If you're wondering if racism was common practice in Victorian-era England, here's your answer: Very much, yes. The Guardian describes "The Adventure of the Three Gables" as "distasteful," noting the "caricature" treatment of the non-white characters. In the story, a Black man who was a former slave is described in excruciatingly racist terms (Holmes complains of his smell more than once), and there are stereotypical references to a "fiery" Spanish woman and Italian "cruelty." It's so blatant and dumb you almost wonder if it's a joke, but no, Arthur Conan Doyle actually wrote this stuff.

Worst of all, the story isn't good. Even putting the racism aside, it's easy to see why this story barely manages three stars on Goodreads. After a "huge negro" bursts into his home, Sherlock Holmes agrees to take on a strange but not exactly compelling case: A woman in a small English town has received an offer to purchase her house and all of its contents — every last item, including her personal items. Later the house is burgled and a manuscript written by the owner's son is stolen. The solution to the mystery is pretty humdrum, Holmes' manner of figuring it out is surprisingly reliant on coincidence and happenstance, and the final resolution is pretty tame. Not all stories can be bangers, but this one commits the worst sin in fiction: It's dull.

What sets Sherlock Holmes apart from other literary detectives is his reliance on data — Holmes solves mysteries by taking in information and then brilliantly assembling it into a solution. Holmes' ability to spot details and immediately see their importance is occasionally superhuman, but, in general, there's a sense of fair play and realism to the stories.

Except in "The Adventure of The Creeping Man," which (SPOILERS!) involves a man injecting himself with a drug extracted from (checks notes) monkeys in order to be virile for his much younger fiancee. You read that correctly: A man takes a drug that makes him behave like (and start to resemble) a monkey.

MX Publishing, which ranks this story at the very bottom of its list of Sherlock Holmes stories, calls it "Offal in nature if not by name," and Book Riot (which also ranks it in the bottom 10 of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories) notes "the weirdest part is when Holmes worries this will lead to a nation of monkey extract addicts." In "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes," author and academic David Stuart Davies calls the story "risible science fiction" and speculates that Doyle was aware of how bad it was, as he had announced it would be the last Holmes story after its publication (though Doyle's "retirement" from Holmes lasted just six months).

"The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter" is not a terrible story in the sense of being poorly written, but it's also creakingly dull — it's also not exactly an example of great writing; the ending of the story feels extremely tacked-on and rushed, with a shift in tone that makes it feel like Arthur Conan Doyle simply wanted to end the story and get it off to the printer.

As the story begins, Sherlock Holmes is contacted when a star rugby player, Godfrey Staunton, goes missing. Staunton's uncle is incredibly rich, so everyone expects a ransom note — but none comes, and Holmes runs into suspicious resistance from some of Staunton's close acquaintances. The rugby aspect brings some fresh atmosphere into the story at first, but this is quickly abandoned in favor of a pretty plodding and surprisingly procedural Holmes story.

Everything shifts suddenly when Holmes tracks a carriage to a remote cottage, and as Stephen Browning writes in "On the Trail of Sherlock Holmes," the story ends up a "sad tale." There's nothing wrong with a sad ending, but it simply doesn't jibe with the rest of the story, and isn't a particularly interesting mystery, either. As noted by History Today, the story is mostly remembered today as the story in which Sherlock Holmes kicks his cocaine habit, which had become something of a concern for Doyle as the understanding of addiction and the destructive power of the drug became more widely understood.

"The Five Orange Pips" can be divisive among Sherlock Holmes fans. On the one hand, as noted by MX Publishing, the story has "a great first half" as Holmes investigates letters demanding that certain papers be returned, each containing dried-up orange seeds (or pips) and arriving in envelopes marked "KKK" (yes, that KKK). Doyle gets the history and purpose of the Ku Klux Klan correct, and Holmes is suitably disdainful of the terrorist group.

But the story collapses in the back half. Dr. Watson is upfront in the beginning that this is one of the only times Holmes actually outright fails, but that doesn't prepare the reader for the way the story just trails off with no arrest or other satisfying event — Holmes makes an effort at attaining justice, but it simply ... fails.

To be fair, the story suffers from the march of time. When first published in 1891, the KKK's reputation and fame had sunk, lending some mystery to the markings on the letters. In the modern age, the moment you see those letters you know exactly what organization sent them, and that solves most of the mystery for you, making this barely a problem worth solving.

"The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge" starts off with what seems like a great mystery: An upstanding man of means, John Eccles, stays over at the house of a new friend named Aloysius Garcia. When he awakes, everyone is gone, including his host and all of the servants. While explaining this mystery to Holmes, the police arrive to announce that Garcia has been murdered.

From that promising start, Arthur Conan Doyle crafts a story that Book Riot describes (correctly) as "profoundly racist" and "way too long." The racism is hard to ignore — this isn't a few casual references you can attribute to old-timey attitudes, this is the baked-in sort of racism that sees all foreigners as monstrous demons — the phrase "hideous mulatto" appears unironically. Author Jessica Durgan notes in her book "Art, Race, and Fantastic Color Change in the Victorian Novel," that the "mulatto cook" is also described in a lazy, racist manner as stupid and graceless. It's not a good look.

The mystery itself is a bit convoluted and doesn't in any way justify the glacial pace and length of this story, though as noted by History Collection, "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge" does introduce the only policeman that Holmes ever respected in Inspector Baynes. Baynes matches Holmes clue for clue and actually solves the mystery independently, somewhat undermining the usual Holmes myth and making this story even less satisfying as a result.

As author Jack Arthur Winn points out in the book "About Sixty," this story is one of just two not narrated by Dr. Watson, and all the action takes place in a single setting — Holmes' home. The reason for both of these features, according to the New York Public Library, is because the story was an adaptation of a one-act play Doyle had written called "The Crown Diamond." The play didn't involve Watson much, and its one-act nature kept it rooted in one location.

As noted in the book "Sherlock Holmes on the Stage," critic Jack Tracy called this story "the prime candidate for the very worst Sherlock Holmes story ever." It's easy to see why: The story begins with Watson arriving at Holmes' house to find a wax effigy of the detective in the window, designed as a decoy for a would-be assassin who is coming to murder Holmes. When the assassin arrives, there is some business with a record player in Holmes' bedroom, giving the illusion that Holmes is in there playing his violin while the detective uses a ridiculous secret passage to re-enter the main room of the apartment to surprise his attackers.

It's not an exciting story, and without Watson's unique voice, the story lacks any sort of style or flare. That, combined with a truly terrible mystery, dooms "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" to the "worst" list.