The Sign of Four

Mary Morstan asks Holmes to investigate her father's disappearance and the pearls she receives each year. The trail leads to Thaddeus Sholto, whose father stole the Agra treasure, and to the murder of Bartholomew Sholto. Holmes tracks the killers down the Thames; the treasure is scattered into the river. Jonathan Small explains the whole history, and Watson becomes engaged to Mary.

Published in 1890. Britain governed India directly after the rebellion of 1857, which Small's narrative describes. Detective fiction was a new and hugely popular form, and Victorian confidence in scientific method underlies Holmes's approach. Cocaine was legal and available.

Holmes is introduced with his syringe rather than with a case, so character precedes plot. The novel ends where it began, which suggests the cycle is unbroken by the investigation.

Watson's ordinary intelligence lets the reader occupy his position rather than Holmes's, and his marriage at the end gives the friendship a cost.

Jonathan Small is a criminal who is granted a long first-person narrative and considerable sympathy. Tonga is given animal imagery and no speech at all, which is the novel's most uncomfortable feature for a modern reader.

Empire supplies both the crime and the wealth, and the treasure's loss in the Thames is the only way the novel can resolve it.

Reason is celebrated, but chance and physical pursuit settle as much of the plot as deduction does.

Greed is shown as a curse: nobody who pursues the treasure benefits from it, and its disappearance is presented as a relief.

The first-person narration withholds Holmes's reasoning until the reveal, which is the engine of the genre. London is rendered through fog and mud, which obscure sight and make Holmes's clarity the more striking, and the geographic precision of the routes gives the fantasy documentary solidity.

This text is examined in Paper 1, Section B. The question is worth 30 marks and an extract from the novel is printed, and the question asks you to start with that extract and then write about the novel as a whole. Allow about 50 minutes.

The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.