The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Summary

The Return of Sherlock Holmes collects thirteen stories published in The Strand Magazine from 1903 to 1904, after Doyle yielded to a decade of public pressure and brought his detective back from the dead. 'The Adventure of the Empty House' begins in 1894 with the baffling murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair, shot through an open window in a locked room. Watson, investigating on his own, is visited by an elderly book collector who turns out to be Holmes in disguise; Watson faints for the first and only time in his life. Holmes explains that he never fell at the Reichenbach Falls: he used a Japanese wrestling art to throw Moriarty over and then hid for three years, travelling in Tibet and elsewhere, while Moriarty's lieutenant Colonel Sebastian Moran hunted him. That night they trap Moran in the empty house opposite Baker Street as he fires an air gun at a wax bust of Holmes. The remaining stories show Holmes back at full strength. 'The Norwood Builder' unmasks a man who faked his own murder to ruin a young lawyer. 'The Dancing Men' is a cipher story, in which stick figures drawn on a Norfolk garden wall carry messages from an American gangster. 'The Solitary Cyclist' protects a music teacher from a forced marriage. 'The Priory School' finds a duke's kidnapped son and turns on cattle-shoe prints. In 'Charles Augustus Milverton' Holmes and Watson break into the house of a blackmailer, 'the worst man in London', and watch one of his victims shoot him; Holmes declines to help the police. 'The Six Napoleons' traces a pearl hidden in a plaster bust. 'The Abbey Grange' and 'The Second Stain' show Holmes weighing justice against law, letting a decent man go and returning a stolen letter without exposing a frightened wife. These stories are often judged the equal of the first series, and they include some of Holmes's most memorable moral choices: he is a servant of truth who sometimes judges that mercy serves justice better than a prosecution would.

Top Lessons

• Law and mercy

  In several stories Holmes lets a sympathetic offender go. Students can weigh when mercy fulfils justice and when it undermines it.

• The worst man in London

  Milverton commits no violence but ruins lives by threatening exposure. Doyle presents blackmail as a deep evil.

• A friend restored

  Watson's joy at Holmes's return shows the depth of their friendship.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Watson faints from shock at Holmes's return, and Holmes treats him with brandy; physician and patient roles recur lightly through the stories.

• The Empty House

  Watson faints on seeing Holmes alive.