Two detective novels thirty-four years apart, and the two poles of the form. The Moonstone (1868) is told by eleven narrators in turn, each with a reason to conceal something, and its detective is a policeman, Sergeant Cuff, who arrives late and is often wrong. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) is a Holmes story: a legend, a moor, a family curse, and a detective who explains everything at the end.
Wilkie Collins builds his plot out of documents and testimony, so the reader assembles the case alongside the characters. Conan Doyle builds his out of atmosphere and withheld information; the pleasure is not solving the crime but watching Holmes solve it. One is a puzzle, the other a performance.
The Hound is short — about 59,000 words, two or three hours — and the best single Holmes novel to start with. The Moonstone is three times as long and rewards attention to who is speaking in each section. Read Collins for the invention of the form; read Doyle for the character who made it popular.
Side by side
Both editions are on this site, so the word counts and reading times are the numbers of the files you download. Screen versions are counted from the verified filmographies on the site; “none listed” means no version has been verified there yet, not that none exists.
| The Hound of the Baskervilles | The Moonstone | |
|---|---|---|
| Published | 1902 | 1868 |
| Author | Arthur Conan Doyle | Wilkie Collins |
| Words here | 59,000 | 197,000 |
| Reading time | 3 h | 11 h |
| Screen versions | 4 | 1 |
| Free edition | The Hound of the Baskervilles | The Moonstone |
How to choose
- Read The Hound of the Baskervilles if you want a short, atmospheric mystery.
- Read The Moonstone if you want the multi-narrator puzzle that detective fiction grew out of.
- Both are complete editions here; the Hound is the one to hand to a reader new to Victorian crime.
Questions readers ask
Is The Moonstone the first detective novel?
It is the first major English detective novel — a claim usually made for it, with Poe’s short stories as the earlier model and The Woman in White as Collins’s own rehearsal.
Do I need to read other Holmes stories first?
No. The Hound works as a standalone: Holmes and Watson are established, but nothing depends on earlier cases.
Which is longer?
The Moonstone, at about 197,000 words against 59,000.
Both novels are in the complete catalogue. More head-to-head comparisons are in the comparison index, and word counts for everything are in the word-count table.