Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles features the phantom dog of Dartmoor, which, according to an ancient legend, has haunted the Baskervilles for generations. When Sir Charles Baskerville dies suddenly of a heart attack on the grounds of the familys estate, the locals are convinced that the spectral hound is responsible, and Holmes is called in. Conan Doyle triumphed and triumphed deservedly, G. K. Chesterton wrote, because he took his art seriously, because he lavished a hundred little touches of real knowledge and genuine picturesqueness on the police novelette.