I believe this is my first Sherlock Holmes, so I admit it was difficult to keep the screen images of Holmes out of my mind while I read; as I read Holmes' analysis, it was Jeremy Brett's voice I heard, for example. But there were many surprises for me about this book, when measured against my expectations. The biggest one was that it is not a thriller, despite the number of times Doyle used the word in the text (and despite the lunging dog on the front cover). The author himself called it a "creeper," and it certainly was that: though Sir Charles Baskerville mysteriously dies, apparently of fright, at the beginning of the book, the reader is carried along not by any definite foreboding, but more by the experience of creeping along with Dr. Watson as he protects the next heir to the Baskerville estate. For me, then, the book became a complicated examination of the ties that bind--Watson to Holmes, servant to master, kin to kin--and how one interloper can threaten them. Every red herring introduced (escaped convict, mysterious bearded stranger, disgruntled houseman, scarlet woman), though ultimately not responsible for the crime at the book's center, still challenges the established social order. In the end, it is really only Watson and Holmes' friendship that emerges unscathed.