The Valley of Fear
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Valley of Fear
20 chapters·6h 23m listening
3.95from 57,922 ratingson Goodreads
"The Valley of Fear" by Arthur Conan Doyle is a novel first published in 1915. In this fourth Sherlock Holmes mystery, the detective receives a coded warning about a plot against a country gentleman named Douglas. When Holmes arrives to investigate, he discovers Douglas has been murdered at his moated manor house. The case leads to dark secrets involving American coal miners, a corrupt trade union, and the dangerous Professor Moriarty. Holmes must unravel a mystery that spans two continents and threatens more lives.
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Published in 1915 after its serialization in The Strand Magazine, The Valley of Fear is the fourth and last Sherlock Holmes novel. It opens with a coded warning from an informant inside Professor Moriarty’s organisation, followed at once by news of a brutal killing at Birlstone Manor, an old moated house in Sussex. As with A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle divides the book in two. After Holmes’s investigation, the second part moves back to the coalfields of Pennsylvania in the 1870s, where a secret society terrorises the mining valley of Vermissa, a story inspired by the Molly Maguires and the detective who infiltrated them.
Characters
Sherlock Holmes — Detective
A coded warning draws Holmes into the investigation of a violent event at an English manor.
Dr. John Watson — Narrator
Holmes's companion, who records the inquiry and the history connected with it.
John Douglas — Resident of Birlstone
An American living in England whose guarded past lies at the center of the mystery.
Cecil Barker — Douglas's friend
A close friend whose account of events attracts the investigators' scrutiny.
Inspector MacDonald — Police inspector
A Scotland Yard officer who consults Holmes on the Birlstone case.
Jack McMurdo — New arrival in Vermissa
A young man who enters a violent mining community in the novel's American narrative.
Boss McGinty — Lodge leader
A powerful local figure whose influence over the mining town extends beyond lawful authority.
About the author
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician who began writing Sherlock Holmes stories while waiting for patients who did not come. He modelled the detective on Joseph Bell, an Edinburgh surgeon who could name a stranger's trade and recent travels from the state of his hands and boots. Doyle thought his historical novels the serious work, killed Holmes off at the Reichenbach Falls in 1893, and was pushed into resurrecting him by public protest and a great deal of money. He spent his last decades campaigning for spiritualism, and twice for men he believed wrongly convicted.