Cracking the case
Oh, no! Someone has stolen the KidzBuzz bowl of candy! Who took it? And where did it go? It looks like we have a mystery on our hands. We’ll need a first-class detective to help us solve it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
People have loved detective stories for a long time, and this year marks a big anniversary of the most famous detective of all — Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is a character made up by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The first Holmes story came out in 1887, but the first full book was published 125 years ago on Halloween — Oct. 31, 1892.
Doyle wasn’t always a writer — he studied medicine in his home country of Scotland and worked as a doctor in England. But during the time he was studying and working,
Doyle he was writing, and after writing some scholarly pieces about medicine, he came up with his first Sherlock Holmes story.
Sherlock Holmes
If you’ve heard Sherlock Holmes stories or seen any of the many movies or TV shows about him, you know that he’s known for his powers of deduction. He has a knack for looking around a room and seeing a tiny detail anyone else would have missed, then piecing together a story from that detail.
Sherlock is helped by his friend John Watson, who is a doctor just like Doyle was. Sherlock and John live together at 221B Baker Street in London, England, where most of their stories begin. Sometimes Sherlock works for the police, and other times, he works for others. But he always solves the mystery.
Sherlock Holmes quickly became a popular and beloved character, but one person got tired of him. In 1893, just one year after the first book came out, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a story where Sherlock died. He wanted to focus on other things he was writing and didn’t think he could do that if he had to write more Sherlock stories. But because people loved the character so much, in 1901, Sherlock came back and revealed he had just been in hiding. He continued to solve mysteries in Doyle’s books until 1927.