Mystery · Detective
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Twelve cases for the world's greatest detective, from a red-headed league to a speckled band.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Twelve cases from Baker Street
A king fears a photograph. A pawnbroker is paid to copy out the encyclopedia by hand. A young woman’s stepfather keeps a cheetah and a baboon in the grounds of his crumbling house. These are the first twelve short stories about Sherlock Holmes, collected in 1892, and they include many of the most famous: “A Scandal in Bohemia”, “The Red-Headed League”, “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Blue Carbuncle” and “The Speckled Band”. Dr Watson tells them all, with admiration and occasional exasperation.
Why it works for learners
Each story is complete in itself and short enough to read in one or two sittings, which is a great feeling in a new language. The structure is reassuringly regular: a visitor at Baker Street, a strange problem, an investigation, an explanation. Once you’ve read two, you know the pattern, and you can give your attention to the language. The vocabulary is observant and concrete: clothes, hands, boots, hats, rooms, trains, letters. Holmes’s explanations model how to describe and reason, and Watson asks the questions you would ask.
Which level to start at
B1 is ideal, and confident A2 readers can manage the more straightforward stories. B2 adds more of Holmes’s dry humor and the Victorian atmosphere. At C1 and C2, Conan Doyle’s prose is quick and clear, among the most readable of any Victorian writer. In Lexo’s narration, Holmes, Watson and each visitor have their own voices, so the long consultations at Baker Street are easy to follow by ear.
Read next
- A Study in Scarlet, the first meeting of Holmes and Watson
- The Hound of the Baskervilles, the most famous Holmes novel
- The Innocence of Father Brown, a very different detective in twelve stories