Le Mystère d'Edwin Drood

The first collection of Holmes short stories, from the Bohemian scandal to the speckled band. Each case runs about twenty pages, which makes it ideal for reading in French one sitting at a time.

Arthur Conan Doyle

A respectable London doctor and the brutal stranger who keeps turning up in his affairs. Short enough to finish in an evening, and told as an investigation rather than a confession.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The first detective story ever written, with Dupin solving a locked room murder in Paris by pure reasoning. Forty pages, and every detective since owes it something.

Edgar Allan Poe

A family curse, a moor at night and a hound that should not exist. The best known Holmes novel, and the one where Watson does most of the legwork alone.

Arthur Conan Doyle

A woman in white stops a man on a road outside London at midnight, and the conspiracy behind her takes eight hundred pages to unravel. Told through several narrators, one of whom steals the book.

Wilkie Collins