Classic Detective Stories

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The Story of the Czarina's Diamonds by Richard Harding Davis Oct 13, 2026

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Following on from The Story of the Naval Attaché last week, we move onto part 2 of Richard Harding Davis's novella: In The Fog, in which a Queen's Messenger has an encounter with the seductive, charming, ruthless, femme fatale, Russian spy Princess Zichy.

It takes place not in the fog, but in an overnight train from Paris to the French Riviera.

Oozing period charm, it reminded me a bit of The Lady Vanishes.

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The Story of the Naval Attache by Richard Harding Davis Oct 06, 2026

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On a winter night when London has quite forgotten the idea of light, an American naval attaché loses his way in the yellow murk near Knightsbridge. The streets are gone, the landmarks drowned; only an occasional scrap of gaslight or distant music proves the city is still there at all. Groping along an iron railing, he finds an open gate, a half‑closed door, and a silent, richly furnished house that should not be open to the fog or to him. Someone has just left in haste. Someone else, he soon discovers, has not left at all. In that strange, luxurious quiet, the fog outside begins to feel less dangerous than whatever is waiting in the rooms within.

In the Fog first appeared in 1901, serialised in The Windsor Magazine, and was later collected by Charles Scribner’s Sons. It is now in the public domain and widely available, including in the Library of Congress Crime Classics edition.

Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916) was an American war correspondent, journalist, and bestselling author of adventure and mystery tales. His work helped define the image of the dashing foreign correspondent and shaped popular fiction on both sides of the Atlantic at the turn of the twentieth century.

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The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Arthur Conan Doyle Sep 29, 2026

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Miss Violet Hunter has been offered a post as governess at a salary so far above the ordinary. The conditions attached are small, and each on its own might be put down to an employer's eccentricity. She goes a handsome house in the Hampshire countryside, where the beech trees burn copper in the evening light. But, as you might imagine, things are not what they seem.

"The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" first appeared in The Strand Magazine in June 1892, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. It was collected later that year as the twelfth and final story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) trained as a doctor in Edinburgh before turning to writing, and created Sherlock Holmes in 1887.

 He wrote fifty-six short stories and four novels about the detective, alongside historical fiction, science fiction and tales of the supernatural.

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The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet by Arthur Conan Doyle Sep 22, 2026

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On a bitter winter morning in London, a respected banker arrives at Baker Street half‑mad with terror. In his keeping was one of the most precious ornaments of the British Empire; now it lies twisted and mutilated, and every sign points to betrayal within his own house. Snow has fallen, secrets have stirred, and somewhere between a locked bureau and a silent suburban garden, honour, love, and ruin have become entangled. Holmes listens, then walks out into the cold to read what the night has written on the world.

First published in The Strand Magazine in May 1892, “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” later appeared as the eleventh tale in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It sits among the early Strand stories that fixed Holmes and Watson in the public imagination.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and writer who created Sherlock Holmes while practising medicine in Southsea. His work ranges from detective fiction and historical romance to science fiction and spiritualist writings.

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The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor (Sherlock Holmes) by Arthur Conan Doyle Sep 15, 2026

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A bride vanishes from her own wedding breakfast. Her clothes are found floating in the Serpentine. A jealous woman is taken away by the police. Every sign points toward something dark, something final — and yet Sherlock Holmes, reading the morning papers over his breakfast in Baker Street, has already seen something that no one else has thought to look for.

Not all disappearances are what they seem. Not all mysteries contain a crime.

"The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" was first published in The Strand Magazine in April 1892, and later that year collected as the tenth story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, published in London by George Newnes.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. A physician by training, he created Sherlock Holmes in 1887 and went on to become one of the most widely read authors in the world. He died in 1930."The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" was first published in The Strand Magazine in April 1892, and later that year collected as the tenth story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, published in London by George Newnes.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. A physician by training, he created Sherlock Holmes in 1887 and went on to become one of the most widely read authors in the world. He died in 1930.

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The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb by Arthur Conan Doyle Sep 10, 2026

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A young hydraulic engineer is offered an unusually generous fee for a small, secret piece of work. The commission requires absolute discretion; the journey must be made at night; and the house to which he is taken seems designed to vanish from memory.

What begins as an odd professional errand becomes a winter journey into locked rooms, guarded silences, strange machinery, and a danger too close to name. In “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,” Arthur Conan Doyle allows Sherlock Holmes to stand at the edge of a tale whose real centre is one man’s account of an encounter he will carry in his body for the rest of his life.

First published in *The Strand Magazine* in March 1892, with illustrations by Sidney Paget.

Collected later in 1892 in *The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes*, published by George Newnes.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician, novelist, and creator of Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson.

Though best known for Holmes, he also wrote historical fiction, adventure tales, science fiction, spiritualist works, and supernatural stories.

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The Man With The Twisted Lip (Sherlock Holmes) by A. Conan Doyle Sep 01, 2026

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In a reeking opium den on the riverside, Dr Watson is looking for a lost soul when he stumbles on something stranger than any drugged vision: an old man who isn’t what he seems, and a disappearance that may not be a crime at all. Clothes without a body, blood on a windowsill, a woman who insists her husband is alive when everyone else is certain he is dead.

First published in The Strand Magazine in December 1891. Collected as the sixth story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892).

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and writer. He created Sherlock Holmes, the world’s best‑known consulting detective, and wrote widely in historical, adventure, and speculative fiction.

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The Five Orange Pips (Sherlock Holmes) by Arthur Conan Doyle Aug 30, 2026

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Five dried orange pips, sent through the post with no letter, no explanation, only three initials scrawled beneath them. Twice before, the same type of letter arrived at an English door.

Twice, within weeks, a man was dead.

Now a third message has come, addressed to a man who comes seeking Sherlock Holme's help.

Somewhere across an ocean, an old debt has not been forgotten. Sherlock Holmes has seen ciphers, poisons, and blackmail — but rarely a warning this odd. This is a story about how far the past can reach.

Publication "The Five Orange Pips" first appeared in The Strand Magazine in November 1891. It was collected the following year in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and writer who created Sherlock Holmes, the world's most enduring fictional detective. Beyond the Holmes canon, he wrote historical novels, science fiction, and non-fiction across a career spanning five decades.

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A Case of Identity by Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) Aug 11, 2026

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A woman comes to Baker Street with a hundred pounds a year, a typewriter, and a fiancé who has vanished into thin air as if he had never existed at all.

Sherlock Holmes never leaves his chair but deduces its solution anyway.

Somewhere in a plush sleeve, a torn glove, an ill-fitting boot, the truth is already sitting in plain sight — waiting only to be noticed by those who know how to think.

"A Case of Identity" was first published in The Strand Magazine in September 1891, and later collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892).

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish writer and physician best known for creating Sherlock Holmes, one of the most enduring detectives in fiction. Beyond the Holmes canon, he wrote historical novels, science fiction, and non-fiction throughout his life.

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Dancing Dan's Christmas by Damon Runyon Dec 25, 2025

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On Christmas Eve during Prohibition, a burglar named Dancing Dan drinks hot Tom and Jerrys at Good Time Charley's speakeasy with the narrator and the proprietor. Dan has been courting Miss Muriel O'Neill, a nightclub worker, despite the dangerous attention of Heine Schmitz, a violent Harlem mobster who considers her his own. As the evening wears on and the liquor flows, Dan arrives with a suspiciously heavy package, and Ooky—a down-and-out porter still wearing his Santa Claus costume from his advertising job—stumbles in and passes out. What begins as a drunken Christmas celebration becomes something more complicated when Dan gets an idea about how to impress Miss Muriel, one that mixes his criminal instincts with an unexpected impulse toward kindness.

Publication: "Dancing Dan's Christmas," first published December 21, 1932 (Collier's magazine); collected in Furthermore (1938).

Author: Damon Runyon (1880–1946), American journalist and short-story writer known for his Broadway underworld tales written in present-tense slang. His stories inspired the musical Guys and Dolls.

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