Hound of the Baskervilles
If Doyle's good friend Fletcher Robinson had never told local legends about escaped prisoners and a family dog as they walked among prehistoric ruins and English moors, The Hound of the Baskervilles may have never been put down on paper. Doyle took this local legend and turned it into the tale of a hellhound and the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville, filled with a cast of characters whose motives are questionable at best. Dr. Watson, who is left alone to do some of the detective work, sinks into the depths that are his surroundings. "The longer one stays here," he says, "the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul." The Hound of the Baskervilles revels in this unsettling surrounding; luring the reader into the quicksand of suspense where an escaped killer is at large on the moor and a murderous, ghostly hound is on the loose.