The Sign of Four

Love a book that ends with some playful banter about the main character getting back into his cocaine habit.

This is the book that really locked in the Sherlock Holmes that we all know. A Study in Scarlet still treats him as a human, but this book turns him into a superhero. He loses some of his insecurity and as a result feels a little less real. Obviously this worked, the character revealed his franchise potential and we still talk about him to this day.

But it feels like there was a slightly different direction the character of Sherlock Holmes could have gone, somewhere a little rougher and more human, and that version would've been interesting to see too.

But hey, instead he became the most iconically Victorian comic book character ever.