The Valley of Fear
novel by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The backstory is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915, and illustrated by Arthur I. Keller.
Plot
Sherlock Holmes receives a cipher message from Fred Porlock, a pseudonymous double agent of Professor Moriarty. Holmes deciphers the message as a warning of a nefarious plot against a man surnamed Douglas, a country gentleman residing at Birlstone House. Some minutes later, Inspector MacDonald arrives at 221B Baker Street with news that Douglas was murdered the night before. MacDonald, Holmes, and Dr. Watson travel to Birlstone House to investigate.
Birlstone House is surrounded by a shallow moat, which the murderer appears to have crossed as they fled the crime scene.
“The Valley of Fear” enters the record as novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Valley, Fear and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Valley of Fear” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Valley, Fear and novel provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q863438. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1914 and 1915.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Valley of Fear” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.