Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle · 1892 · 10 essays

Ten essays on Doyle's twelve stories and the playable version of them: which one to open first and how Doyle ranked them himself in 1927, the four screen Holmeses weighed against the text, what the BBC and Elementary each built on top of Irene Adler's one appearance, why Doyle killed his own detective off on purpose, the word everyone gets wrong in the “Data! Data! Data!” line, the cast of the book including two famous names that are not in it, and the four essays that pick up where the Saylia Sherlock Holmes podcast leaves off.

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Sidney Paget's 1892 Strand Magazine illustration for The Adventure of the Speckled Band, with Holmes and Watson listening to a veiled client

Doyle's Own Twelve

Which Sherlock Holmes Story Should You Read First? Doyle's Own Ranking of the Twelve Adventures

Twelve stories, no required order, and a reading-order genre that answers a question nobody asked. Doyle published a ranking of his own in 1927, and four of his top twelve are in this one book.

September 7, 2026 · 8 min read

A 1900 lithographed poster of William Gillette seated beside an oil lamp as Sherlock Holmes, fingertips together

Four Faces, One Detective

Every Sherlock Holmes Adaptation, Ranked for Faithfulness: Granada, BBC, Downey, Elementary

Guinness counted 254 screen Sherlock Holmeses back in 2012. Ask which one is best and you get a fight; ask which is closest to what Doyle actually wrote and the answer has been the same for forty years.

September 7, 2026 · 9 min read

Herbert Rose Barraud's 1893 photographic portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle in a tweed jacket, taken the year he killed Sherlock Holmes off

Killed Him Once

Did Arthur Conan Doyle Hate Sherlock Holmes? Why He Killed Him, and Why He Brought Him Back

Doyle sent his detective over a waterfall in 1893 and spent the next decade being asked to undo it. The letter to his mother, the cancellation figure nobody can source, and the two real criminal cases he worked himself.

September 7, 2026 · 9 min read

Sidney Paget's 1891 Strand Magazine illustration for A Scandal in Bohemia, with a masked client standing over Holmes and Watson

The Woman, Expanded

Irene Adler on Screen vs the Book: What the BBC and Elementary Invented

One story, under nine thousand words, and she is out of the country by the end of it. Everything else you have seen Irene Adler do — the romance, the phone, the reveal that she is Moriarty — was written for television.

September 7, 2026 · 9 min read

A Strand Magazine facsimile of Arthur Conan Doyle's handwritten manuscript for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Bricks Without Clay

“Data! Data! Data!” What the Sherlock Holmes Line Means, and the Word Everyone Misquotes

The line turns up on conference slides and in data-quality decks, almost always one word wrong. Doyle put it in the last of the twelve Adventures, in the mouth of a man who is worried about a client he could not talk out of a bad decision.

September 7, 2026 · 7 min read

The Baker Street Cast

Who's Who in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Every Character in the Twelve Stories

Ask anyone to name the cast and you get Holmes, Watson, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Moriarty and Mycroft. Four of those six are in the 1892 collection. The other two appear in it exactly zero times.

September 7, 2026 · 9 min read

An elegant woman seated by a bright window — The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes cover art for the Saylia podcast

The Woman Who Won

The one Sherlock Holmes case he loses — and the woman who beat him (2026)

You picture Sherlock Holmes as an unbeatable, unfeeling logic machine. But the very first story in the collection is the one he loses — to Irene Adler, a woman he underestimated. Afterward he keeps her photograph and calls her only “the woman.” The one time the machine loses is the most human he ever gets.

July 3, 2026 · 8 min read

Holmes and Watson conferring by lamplight over case papers — The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes cover art for the Saylia podcast

Dr. Watson isn't the bumbling sidekick — he's the blueprint every genius-and-friend duo copies (2026)

You've been told Dr. Watson is the bumbling comic sidekick who fumbles while the genius thinks. Doyle wrote the opposite: a sharp ex-army surgeon, wounded in Afghanistan, who narrates almost every case — the reader's stand-in who keeps an impossible genius human. If you have one brilliant, difficult friend, you're already playing Watson, and it's more work than it looks.

July 3, 2026 · 8 min read

A cyanotype-blue collage of case documents beneath a magnifying glass — The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes cover art for the Saylia podcast

See, Then Observe

“You see, but you do not observe”: Sherlock Holmes's two-move superpower (2026)

It's eleven at night and he still hasn't texted back — and your brain has already written the whole story. Sherlock Holmes has a 130-year-old fix, and it's two moves, not one: notice before you narrate, and refuse to build the story until you have the data.

July 3, 2026 · 9 min read

Sherlock Holmes slumped in his chair between cases amid his chemical apparatus — The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes cover art for the Saylia podcast

Bored Out of His Mind

Sherlock Holmes's real problem isn't crime — it's boredom (2026)

We remember the deductions. Doyle wrote a man who falls apart the moment there's no case to solve — black moods, cocaine, a restless mind that can't survive a quiet Saturday. Meet the patron saint of the always-needs-a-project mind.

July 3, 2026 · 8 min read