Most people think of a deerstalker hat and a pipe when they hear the name. It's inevitable. But if you actually sit down and look at the massive pile of Arthur Conan Doyle short stories written over his lifetime, you realize the detective in 221B Baker Street was basically just the tip of a very weird, very dark iceberg.
Doyle actually hated Holmes. Kinda. He felt the detective "blocked his view" of better things. He tried to kill him off at Reichenbach Falls just so he could focus on historical novels and his bizarre obsession with the supernatural. Honestly, if you only know the detective stuff, you’re missing out on some of the most bone-chilling horror and high-stakes adventure ever put to paper. He wrote about everything from prehistoric monsters to sentient mold.
The stories that have nothing to do with Baker Street
The range is actually staggering. While the world was clamoring for more clues and deductions, Doyle was busy writing about a terrifying creature living in the upper atmosphere. In The Horror of the Heights, he posits that the sky isn't just empty air, but an ecosystem filled with "air-jungles" inhabited by gelatinous, semi-transparent monsters. It’s early science fiction at its most paranoid. He wasn't just a mystery writer; he was a pioneer of the "weird tale."
Then you have the medical stories. Before he was a full-time author, Doyle was a struggling doctor in Southsea. He knew exactly what a surgery smelled like before anesthesia was a refined art. This raw, often gruesome experience bled into his Round the Red Lamp collection. Stories like The Case of Lady Sannox aren't cozy mysteries. They are brutal. In that specific story, a surgeon is tricked into mutilating his own mistress under the guise of a life-saving operation. It’s nasty. It’s visceral. It shows a side of Doyle that most modern adaptations of his work completely ignore because it's too dark for a Sunday night procedural.
Why Arthur Conan Doyle short stories still work in 2026
It’s the pacing. He was writing for magazines like The Strand, which were the Netflix of the Victorian era. If you didn't hook the reader in the first three paragraphs, you were dead. You’ve probably noticed how some modern thrillers take 200 pages to get going? Doyle didn't have that luxury. He mastered the "stinger" ending—the kind of twist that makes you want to go back and re-read the whole thing immediately.
The Adventure of the Speckled Band is often cited as the gold standard for the Holmes short form, but look at The Brown Hand. It’s a ghost story about a surgeon haunted by the spectral hand of a dead patient. It deals with guilt, the ethics of medicine, and the terrifying idea that we can't escape our professional failures. It’s short. It’s punchy. It works because Doyle understood that a short story isn't a compressed novel—it's a single, sharp emotional spike.
The Brigadier Gerard era: Action over intellect
If Holmes represents the cold, calculating side of the British psyche, Brigadier Gerard represents the absolute opposite. These Arthur Conan Doyle short stories are basically the 19th-century version of an 80s action movie. Gerard is a soldier in Napoleon’s army. He’s incredibly brave, wildly charismatic, and—this is the best part—kind of an idiot.
He constantly misunderstands the world around him, leading to hilarious and dangerous situations. Doyle loved Gerard way more than he loved Holmes. You can feel the joy in the writing. While the Holmes stories can sometimes feel like a logic puzzle, the Gerard stories feel like a pub crawl through a war zone. They remind us that Doyle was a master of voice. He could inhabit the mind of a narcissistic French hussar just as easily as he could a Victorian gentleman.
The dark side of the spiritualism obsession
We have to talk about the ghosts. Toward the end of his life, Doyle went deep into Spiritualism. He lost his son in World War I, and like many grieving parents of that era, he desperately wanted to believe the veil between worlds was thin. This changed the DNA of the Arthur Conan Doyle short stories significantly.
He moved away from "rational" explanations. In his early work, the "ghost" always turns out to be a guy in a sheet or a clever mechanical trick. In his later work, the ghosts are real. This shift makes some critics uncomfortable. They want the logical Doyle. But the late-period supernatural stories have a frantic, sincere energy. He wasn't writing for a paycheck anymore; he was writing to convince himself that death wasn't the end.
Misconceptions about his writing style
- People think he’s wordy. He actually isn't. Compare him to Dickens. Doyle is lean.
- People think he only wrote for men. Not true. His female characters, while limited by Victorian tropes, often drive the plot through their own agency, especially in his suspense stories.
- The "Watson is a bumbling fool" trope. If you read the actual short stories, Watson is a decorated war vet and a competent doctor. The "bumbling" version was a later invention by Hollywood.
Beyond the magnifying glass: What to read first
If you want to move past the Sherlock bubble, start with The Captain of the Pole-Star. it's a maritime horror story set in the Arctic. It captures that feeling of isolation and creeping dread perfectly. There's a reason researchers like Dr. Anne Chapman, an expert in Victorian literature, point to Doyle's gothic work as some of the most influential in the genre. He knew how to use the "unknown" to create genuine anxiety in the reader.
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Another essential is The Brazilian Cat. Imagine being trapped in a room with a hungry black panther while your wealthy cousin watches through a window. It’s pure suspense. No detectives, no puzzles—just survival.
Taking action: How to explore the Doyle canon
Stop buying "Best of Sherlock Holmes" collections. They are repetitive. Instead, look for the "Collected Supernatural Tales" or the "Napoleonic Stories." You can find most of these for free on Project Gutenberg because they are in the public domain.
- Step 1: Download a digital copy of The Poison Belt. It’s a Professor Challenger story (the guy from The Lost World) where the Earth passes through a toxic ether. It’s basically an apocalypse story written in 1913.
- Step 2: Read one Brigadier Gerard story, specifically How the Brigadier Held the King. It’ll change your mind about Doyle being a "serious" or "stiff" writer.
- Step 3: Watch for the recurring themes. Notice how Doyle constantly obsesses over the tension between science and the occult. It’s the defining conflict of his life.
Doyle was a man caught between two worlds. He lived through the peak of the Industrial Revolution but died chasing fairies and talking to mediums. His short stories are the map of that transformation. They aren't just entertainment; they are a record of a brilliant mind slowly losing faith in pure logic and searching for something more. You don't need a magnifying glass to see that value. You just need to be willing to look where the shadows are darkest.
Next Steps for the Reader
To get the most out of Doyle's range, begin with the Professor Challenger series for a blend of science fiction and adventure. Then, move into his Gothic and Mystery collections to see his mastery of horror without the safety net of a detective’s intervention. This reveals the true breadth of his contribution to English literature beyond the streets of London.