I studied five of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. A mystery story is a piece of fiction in which a crime of some kind is central to the plot. By this I mean that the crime is a significant part of the story, to the point that if you remove the crime from the story, the plot has no meaning. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in "A Study of Scarlet", published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. Conan Doyle was paid a lot for this. Its success encouraged Conan Doyle to write a full novel, and two years later Micah Clarke was published to critical acclaim. Doyle added to this success with a series of Holmes stories for The Strand Magazine in 1891. Although his stories were popular, Conan Doyle felt he had not yet made a lasting name in English literature and referred to Holmes as taking his mind "from better things. The Holmes stories were all set in the Victorian city of London, a city of startling contrasts. New construction and wealthy development went hand in hand with horribly overcrowded slums where people lived in the worst conditions imaginable. The population increased over the course of the 19th century, from around 1 million in 1800 to over 6 million a century later. This growth far exceeded London's ability to provide for the basic needs of its citizens that I read gave little clues as to what was going to happen in the story. The titles vary in length and content, the first two stories I studied had titles with characters in "The Engineer's Thumb" and "The Man with the Crooked Lip". The next two titles simply contained one item. “The Speckled Band” and “The Cardboard Box” and the last story I studied had an animal as the main part of the title. Although these titles are different, they all have the same importance for the stories, the title of the story must catch the reader's attention so that he picks up the book and reads it. All of these titles grab the reader's attention because they are short and make the reader think, for example: "What does a man with a crooked lip have to do with the story?" and “How did that man end up with a twisted lip?” ?'. When people see the title “The Cardboard Box” they think 'What's in the Cardboard Box?' and 'What does a cardboard box have to do with a mystery story?'. This way, people are interested in the book and intrigued enough to want to continue reading. Story beginnings grab people's attention by using lots of descriptive details to describe characters. At the beginning of "The Man with the Crooked Lip" it says that Whitney was described as having yellow teeth, a pasty yellow face with droopy eyelids, and pinpoint pupils. There are also many descriptive details at the beginning of the stories to set the scene, for example at the beginning of "The Engineers Thumb" we learn that it is the summer of 1889 and Dr. Watson received many patients who were railroad officials because he lived near Paddington station. Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are written in Watson's first-person view. This makes the reader feel more involved in the story because it's as if Watson is simply talking to you. “Looking over my notes on the last seventy-odd cases in which I have studied over the last eight years the method of my friend Sherlock Holmes,” Doyle lures the reader into reading by revealing almost nothing about the plot in the first two pages. In “The Man with the Crooked Lip” there is a storydifferent for the first three pages, this story is about Kate Whitney's husband, Isa Whitney. He took the drug Opium and did not return home, Dr. Watson was sent to find him at the opium den. Watson found Isa and sent him home only to then find Sherlock Holmes and go out to solve the mystery of Neville St. Clair's disappearance. This makes the reader want to keep reading because it makes them guess what the mystery is and who did it? The settings used in Arthur Conan Doyle's mystery stories are very typical of the settings used in other mystery stories. In Engineers Thumb, Mr. Hatherley (the engineer) was taken to a dark house, where he was asked to wait in another room alone. He describes the room as "decorated with a round table on which there are some German books." Scene setting is an important device used by crime writers, they try to allow the reader to see what they are reading about. This also creates fear and tension in the reader because now the reader can see the scene in his mind, he can imagine himself there, which might scare him. Doyle draws the reader's attention using streams of consciousness that we walked up and down the lawn several times, neither Miss Stoner nor I liked to break into her thoughts before she woke up from this puts the reader in the characters shoes and this it also creates empathy in the reader. I think the tension in the lyrics gradually increases until the climax. Arthur Conan Doyle does this by using long, complex sentences at the beginning of stories. The habit was acquired, as I understand it, by a stupid whim when he was in college, for after reading De Quincey's description of his dreams and sensations, he had soaked tobacco in laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects. the reader feels relaxed and provides a lot of information about the setting and mystery. Then as the tension builds, short simple sentences are used towards the climax "Allow me to introduce you to Mr Neville St Clair of Kent", this makes the reader anxious and increases the tension. At the climax of the lyrics there is a lot of repetition, for example 'the gang, the spotted gang', this increases the sense of panic and at the climax reassures the reader. Doyle uses very short paragraphs throughout the stories to create tension. Punctuation is also used throughout the texts for effect. I took out the knife and, lo and behold!' the use of the exclamation point suggests emotion, fear, panic, tension and introduces a sense of urgency. I think the climax of the stories is very satisfying for the reader, as the reader thought while reading the lyrics "Who did it?" and there's always a twist towards the end of the text so that the person found guilty is never who you think they will be. In "The Man with the Twisted Lip" you would never think that the man in the room above the opium den is Neville St. Clair until the end of the text, so Arthur Conan Doyle kept you stumped. Endings are very important for mystery stories because the whole mystery story is focused on the end, so if the end of the story isn't fun and doesn't leave you surprised, the whole story will feel pointless. The story I liked the most was "The Man with the Crooked Lip" because at first sight the mystery seemed very easy to solve, then some strange clues made sense until it concluded when we discovered that the man with the crooked lip was Mr. Neville St. Clair. There are many underlying meanings in the stories, which should teach you a lesson or perhaps just make you think about your situation. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom article from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay I think the use of language from