Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles

My neighborhood bookstore was touting a Sherlock Holmes detective story, and I wondered why? "Babyboomers don't read Sherlock Holmes stuff anymore," I thought.
With some hesitation I purchased The Hound of the Baskervilles and read it over the weekend. The novelette is a detection story about a spectral hound that has terrorized the country side. It turns out that the ghostly hound wasn't ghostly at all but real, a half-starved dog so kept by a convict.
Before long, I realized why I hadn't read Conan Doyle in such a long time. First, Sherlock's cruelty toward Watson is tasteless; not to say rude to the reader. But on the other hand one cannot help thinking that the ill treatment may be due to Watson's obsequious nature. Yet arrogance and cruelty in any shape is repulsive to me.
Second, Holmes thinks of Watson as a dunce, a vehicle for the detective's genius, and he isn't reluctant to say it:

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.

If the author intended for us --the audience-to hate his main character Sherlock Holmes, then he did achieve his goal, for what can be more detestable than a character that denigrates another while elevating himself in such an obvious manner.Third, oh yes--let's not ignore Holmes' props: clay pipe and violin. After a while one get bored with such trivialities, and the characters inevitably becomes a cartoon.
The novel lacks substance; in that, for two thirds of the book Holmes is absent, leaving all the leg work and sleuthing to the amiable Watson. Readers are interested in Holmes' mind, not in Watson's, since we have been conditioned to think that Watson is an intellectual midget.
Anyway, were it not for the well balanced sentences, this detection story -a horror story, though a mild one by today's standards- would not have merited to be revived. What I admire in Conan Doyle is his mastery of English syntax and his employment of rhetorical tools.
Alliteration:
Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun.
Negative reversal and alliteration:
Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish, be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out the wall of fog.
Concretization of the abstract:
There were pride, valor and strength in his thick brows, sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes.
Notice how, in the above example, the abstract nouns 'pride,' 'valor,' and 'strength' are anchored in the reader's mind by the qualified concrete nouns 'brows' and 'nostrils.'
All the above techniques coupled with the lavish display of ancient family lore will continue to delight readers for many generations to come. Or, shall we say, the sins of the fathers will be visited on the sons, as it was in the story of the clan of the Baskervilles.

Retired. Former investment banker, Columbia University-educated, Vietnam Vet (67-68).