The Real Reason Behind "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

When Conan Doyle finally agreed to write a new Holmes story after killing him off, he didn't actually want to bring him back to life yet. The Hound of the Baskervilles is famously set before Holmes's death. The funny part is how the book came to be: Conan Doyle was on a golfing holiday with a friend who told him a creepy local ghost story about a phantom hound. Conan Doyle realized he could make a fortune if he just slapped Sherlock Holmes into the plot, admitting to his mother in a letter that the book was a calculated cash-grab to fund his true passion—buying a new automobile.