There have been many famous detectives in literature. But one of the first-and certainly the most famous is Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was created by the British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the late nineteenth century.
Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in the work A Study in Scarlet, which was published in 1887. Holmes instantly became a popular literary figure with the general populace, who demanded that Doyle write more stories involving him. Doyle compiled and eventually wound up writing fifty-six short stories and four novels that featured Holmes. While he took a break of several years from creating stories about Holmes, Doyle continued to write Holmes stories until 1927. Among the most famous of all the works featuring Holmes are The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Blue Carbuncle, and A Scandal in Bohemia.
One of the reasons that Sherlock Holmes was so popular concerns the method he employs to solve his cases: logic. Together with his partner, Dr. Watson, Holmes uses his powers of observation to detect clues that can help him solve the cases he accepts. Holmes has an incredibly sharp mind that enables him to determine who the guilty party is or what the problem is. Holmes also is a master of disguise, which he proves many times, and he is skilled at boxing as well as sword fighting.
While Holmes often solves cases that are unrelated to one another, he has a nemesis with whom he comes into both direct and indirect conflict in several stories. That person is Professor Moriarty, the leader of a crime ring in London. In one of the stories, The Final Problem, Holmes and Moriarty fight one another and fall to their deaths by plunging down a steep cliff near a waterfall. When he wrote that story, Doyle had tired of Holmes and wanted to kill off the character. He then refrained from writing about Holmes for many years but public demand for more detective stories induced him to bring Holmes back from the dead and to continue writing.
(Adapted from Reading Intermediate)