The Sign of Four

1889

crime & mystery
classic fiction
andamanese
arrow poisons
bloguns
convicts
crime & mystery fiction
crocodiles
detective and mystery fiction
fiction

The story

The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ---------- Also contained in: [Adventures of Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20624138W) [Adventures of Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18191906W) [Annotated Sherlock Holmes. 1/2](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1518438W) [Best of Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18195589W) [Boys' Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8696809W) [Celebrated Cases of Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16076930W) [Complete Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18188824W) [Complete Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14929975W) [Illustrated Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1518342W) [Original Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL262529W) [Sherlock Holmes: His Most Famous Mysteries](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14930414W) [Sherlock Holmes: The Novels](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16018654W) [The Sign of the Four, A Scandal in Bohemia and Other Stories](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20630338W) [Sign of the Four and Other Stories](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20628655W) [Tales of Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1518350W) [Tales of Sherlock Holmes](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1518418W) [Works](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16173818W)

What it’s like

Brisk Victorian prose with a foggy, gaslit undertow: London streets slick with rain, smoke-thick river mud, and the hot, airless tension of a colonial past that drifts in from the Andamans. Doyle's narration is crisp and wry, with a chatty companion's voice carrying the reader past sudden shifts of scene, from a cluttered Baker Street sitting room with its chemical reek and violin notes to a dim, lamp-lit cab chase through cobbled night streets. The mood is cool, observant and faintly eerie rather than gory: a poisoned dart, a wooden box of strange pearls, and a sinister, shadowed figure lend an undercurrent of dread without graphic detail. Violence is brief and largely offstage, the fights and deaths quick and unlingering, and the content is otherwise restrained. Pacing is brisk, with short chapters that snap forward and a steady rhythm of deduction and dialogue. The emotional register is dry, companionable and quietly melancholic, shaped around an isolated, ill-at-ease heroine and a friendship held together by mutual loyalty. Well suited to a rainy evening with tea, or a long train journey, for readers who want atmospheric puzzle-solving with mild menace and no gore.

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