In this early entry in the Sherlock Holmes canon, Doyle has Sherlock Holmes doing most of the talking. That’s unusual in the canon, because it is typically John Watson who tells the story, not Holmes. This was on Doyle’s short list of favorite stories, and it is easy to see why. It has elements of both the familiar and the macabre, in terms of detective story structure. One character goes mad and another is buried… but, let’s not have any spoilers. Suffice to say that Holmes has little to go on in solving this mystery, but he makes a lot of what little he has with which to work. The Holmes in this story is a bit sheepish and shorn of pride, another unusual turn for the “greatest consulting detective in the world,” and for a man usually convinced of the truth of the label.

Holmes gets to the bottom of the case of the Musgrave Ritual