Publisher's Synopsis
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Dr James Mortimer asks Sherlock Holmes for advice after his friend Sir Charles Baskerville was found dead in the park surrounding his manor, in the moors of Devon. The death was attributed to a heart attack, but according to Mortimer, Sir Charles's face retained an expression of horror. Not only that but not far from the corpse the footprints of a gigantic hound were clearly visible. According to an old legend, a curse runs in the Baskerville family since the time of the English Civil War, when a Sir Hugo Baskerville was killed by a huge demonic hound. Allegedly, the same creature has been haunting the mires of Dartmoor ever since, causing the premature death of many Baskerville heirs. Sir Charles believed in the plague of the hound and Mortimer now fears for the next in line, Sir Henry Baskerville.Even though he dismisses the whole curse story as nonsense, Holmes agrees to meet Sir Henry in London as soon as Sir Henry arrives from Canada, where his branch of the family had moved in the past. He is a young and jovial good-looking fellow, sceptical toward the grim legend and eager to take possession of Baskerville Hall, even though he has just received an anonymous note in the mail, warning him to stay away from the moor. When someone tries to follow Sir Henry while he is walking down a street, however, Holmes asks Watson to go with the young man and Mortimer to Dartmoor, in order to protect Sir Henry and search for any clue about who is menacing his life.
