The Hound of the Baskervilles: A Detective Novel Without a Detective?

         For my second and final blog post, I thought it would be interesting to talk about The Hound of the Baskervilles and the unique way that Conan Doyle wrote the novel.  In most detective novels or stories that I have read, the detective is a very prominent part of the story and is alongside the sidekick for most, if not all, of the novel.  Therefore, I was surprised when on page 39 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes says goodbye to Watson and is not heard from for the next 50 pages (which is a rather large chunk of the novel).  Yes, I know that Sherlock is still technically lingering in the background during this time, gathering intel while relaxing in a stone hut as only he would do, but it was still rather puzzling to me.  Why write a detective novel where the detective is not present for almost half of it?

I suppose it is possible that Conan Doyle wanted to give the reader a sort of free reign to unravel the mystery on his or her own, since the gap between the average reader’s intelligence and Watson’s intelligence is significantly smaller than the gap between the average reader’s intelligence and Sherlock’s intelligence.  However, a lot of the information needed to piece clues together is not available to the reader until Sherlock reveals it.  The reader knows that Mr. Stapleton is unreasonably angry when Sir Henry professes his love to Mrs. Stapleton, for example, but this detail alone is not enough for the reader to be able to put together that Mr. and Mrs. Stapleton are actually husband and wife opposed to brother and sister.  The information about the convoluted past of “Mr. and Mrs. Stapleton” that leads to the discovery that the two are husband and wife is not revealed until Sherlock tells Watson about the research he did on Mr. Stapleton’s background as a schoolteacher.  It almost felt to me as though Conan Doyle just wanted to increase the length of the story by having the reader follow Watson, because he knew that Watson would put together clues slower than Sherlock would. While some of the clues that Watson discovered were interesting to me, I found myself getting a little bit bored by the sluggish pace of the middle part of the novel.  

While I holistically enjoyed The Hound of the Baskervilles, it irritates me that Conan Doyle chose to have Sherlock Holmes’ character be absent for a chunk of the novel.  I feel like one of the most enjoyable parts of the world that Conan Doyle creates with Sherlock Holmes is the banter between Holmes and Watson.  Therefore, when only Watson is present in the middle of the book it seems dry and like there are numerous missed opportunities for additional humor and excitement.  Moreover, Watson is just not as interesting of a character as Sherlock in my opinion, and therefore the book begins to drag when Sherlock is absent. Maybe I would have been less irritated by Conan Doyle’s choice if Sherlock was not waiting in the wings the whole time and Watson truly figured out the crime by himself.  However, Sherlock was still the one who pieced all of the clues together and figured out the crime, while only using a few of the details that Watson reported to him.  Hence, for a sizable part of the novel I felt like I was reading a detective novel without what I consider to be a true detective.  While I understand that Conan Doyle claims that Stapleton may have been suspicious and overly cautious if Sherlock was present, to me Sherlock being absent from the story felt like a literary mechanism that was merely used to lengthen the story.