Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: King of Mystery

We have had so many wonderful short story mystery writers over the last hundred years or so. We've had Agatha Christie and her Hercule Poirot. And we can't forget Erle Stanley Gardner and his renowned Perry Mason. Though I have read the short stories by these authors many times over, and though I am a big fan of their work, they don't quite measure up to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his Sherlock Holmes. In my eyes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle definitely measures up to King of Mystery.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 22, 1859, and died on July 7, 1930. He was educated and trained as a medical doctor and ophthalmologist. He must not have been very good at it though, because in his spare time, when he wasn't busy, he started writing his Sherlock Holmes Mysteries. In fact, he wrote 56 short stories, and 4 novels about this famous sleuth.

I first became acquainted with the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his fictitious detective Sherlock Holmes, after reading Hound of the Baskervilles as a young child. Though Hound of the Baskervilles was a novel, it was enough to get me hooked. When I took the book back to the library, and the librarian asked me if I would like to check out a book that had a whole collection of short stories about Sherlock Holmes. The book was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In this book is the story The Speckled Band and I really feel that as I was reading the story, I was wide '" eyed and full of goose bumps. The story was so scary, yet when I finished the story, I realized that there was nothing scary at all about it. That is one thing that makes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes so amazingly unique. When you get to the end of the story, you realize that things were not as they seemed at all.

Another short story mystery by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that I became qu59ite fond of was 'ËœThe Five Orange Pips.' It was another of his great short stories that took me all the way to the end trying to figure everything out.

An excerpt of this story takes place when John Openshaw is telling Sherlock Holmes of his mystery, trying to convince him to look into it.

"One day '" it was in March, 1883 '" a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon a table in front of the colonel's plate. It was not a common thing for him to receive letters, for his bills were paid in ready money, and he had no friends of any sort. "From India!" said he as he took it up. "Pondicherry postmark! What can this be?" Opening it up hurriedly, out there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate. I began to laugh at this, but the laugh was struck from my lips at the sight of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding, his skin the colour of putty, and he glared at the envelope which he still held in his trembling hand. "K.K.K.!" he shrieked, and then, "My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me!"

Now is that excerpt not enough to make any lover of the mystery genre absolutely have to read the story? Well, you can at this link. In fact, you can read more of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes at this link. I feel that soon, you too will think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as King of Mystery.


Resources:
http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/SherlockHolmes/index.htm
http://sirconandoyle.com