The Valley of Fear

The Valley of Fear is Arthur Conan Doyle's fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel, published in 1915. Holmes and Watson investigate a violent incident at Birlstone Manor, where physical clues and conflicting accounts suggest that appearances conceal a carefully arranged deception. The narrative then moves backward to an American mining community dominated by a secret organization. This second story explains the danger that reaches into the English investigation. By joining a detective puzzle to an extended account of threatened lives and concealed identities, the novel makes the past an active force in the present.