The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The second collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, published in 1894, holds some of the best: 'Silver Blaze', with its curious incident of the dog in the night-time, 'The Gloria Scott' and 'The Musgrave Ritual', cases from before Holmes met Watson, and 'The Greek Interpreter', which introduces his cleverer and lazier brother Mycroft.

It ends with 'The Final Problem', in which Conan Doyle, tired of his detective, sent him over the Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty. Readers were outraged, and the story of how Holmes came back is told in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Start with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes if you are new to the series.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh, trained as a doctor and wrote stories while waiting for patients at his practice in Southsea. Sherlock Holmes, modelled partly on his old teacher Joseph Bell, who could diagnose a patient's life at a glance, first appeared in 1887 and soon made Doyle one of the best-paid writers in the world.

He grew tired of his detective, killed him off in 1893 and was forced by his readers to bring him back. Doyle also wrote historical novels, the adventure The Lost World and campaigns for wrongly convicted men. Start with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles.