2 h 13 minAudiobook9 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 2 h 13 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when Sherlock Holmes brings his famous certainty to the rough mining country of the American West?
In A Double Barrelled Detective Story, Mark Twain puts a crime, a thirst for revenge and a famous detective into a short comic novel. Sherlock Holmes trusts his powers of deduction. Archy Stillman, a Western tracker, finds truth through a natural gift of sense. Their different ways of investigating give Twain plenty to laugh at.
In the mining settlement, the harsh and feared Flint Buckner sets trouble in motion. Fetlock Jones, a young man tied to Holmes, has schemes that test the detective’s skill. Hidden identities and revenge give the comedy a darker edge. Beneath the jokes lies a sharp question: how much can a clever man really know from a handful of clues?
What you’ll discover
- Holmes away from home See the confident London detective face a very different world in the American West.
- A rival to deduction Meet Archy Stillman, whose natural gift offers another way to uncover the truth.
- Revenge beneath the laughter Follow a darker thread of revenge through a story full of comic mockery.
- People behind their masks Enter a mystery where hidden identities make people harder to read than they seem.
- The limits of cleverness Enjoy Twain’s sharp teasing of a detective’s faith in his own powers of reasoning.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy detective stories that laugh at themselves, tales of revenge with a sharp moral edge, and Mark Twain's mining-camp humor.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A cruel wedding plants a seed of revenge
- A mother trains her son as a human bloodhound
- The hunt finds the wrong man and never ends
- A bullied boy plots the perfect murder
- A missing child shows Archy's gift and Holmes's legend
- Holmes measures everything and Archy finds the truth
- Revenge and hero worship both go wrong
- A tragedy told as a joke, in two halves
Who’s who
- Archy StillmanA gentle young man with a bloodhound's sense of smell, sent by his mother to hunt a man, who finds himself tracking something else.
- Mrs. StillmanArchy's proud, wounded mother, who turns her grief into a plan of revenge and trains her son to carry it out.
- Jacob FullerThe Virginia husband whose cruelty starts everything, and the name Archy is sent to track across the West.
- Sherlock HolmesThe world-famous detective, arriving in a silver camp to a hero's welcome, ready to explain a crime with measuring tape and theory.
- Fetlock JonesA meek English boy, bullied by his master, who spends his nights working out a murder that nobody can trace.
- Flint BucknerA sour, unfriendly miner whom the whole camp dislikes, and whose cabin holds powder, fuse, and many secrets.
- Sammy HillyerArchy's good-hearted cabin mate, a loyal son and the one friend of the camp's outcast.
- Wells-Fargo FergusonThe camp's educated talker, who adores Holmes and explains every wonder in grand, confident terms.
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Una historia de detectives con doble cañón
by Mark Twain · 1902
A boy with a bloodhound's nose hunts the wrong man across the world while Sherlock Holmes visits a mining camp.
Easy read2–5 hours to readEspañol
Excellent
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In short
What would you do if your child could follow a scent like a bloodhound? In this short novel by Mark Twain, a mother in New England answers that question in the darkest way she can.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A cruel wedding plants a seed of revenge
The story opens in Virginia in 1880. Jacob Fuller, twenty-six, marries a nineteen-year-old heiress who defied her widowed father to be with him. The morning after the ceremony, he tells her the truth. He married her only to punish her father, who had insulted his family name.
For three months she endures every humiliation a cruel mind can invent. She tells no one, and her pride is her only weapon. Then comes the night he has been saving. He ties her to a tree beside the public road, gags her, strikes her with a whip, and sets his bloodhounds on her. He leaves her for passing farmers to find and vanishes.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 9 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1902
- Language
- Español
- Reading time
- 1 h 25 min
- Level
- Easy read
Cite this edition
Twain, Mark. A Double Barrelled Detective Story. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-double-barrelled-detective-story.
Twain, M. (2026). A double barrelled detective story. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-double-barrelled-detective-story (Original work published 1902)
Twain, Mark. A Double Barrelled Detective Story. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-double-barrelled-detective-story.
@book{twain2026double,
author = {Twain, Mark},
title = {A Double Barrelled Detective Story},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-double-barrelled-detective-story},
note = {First published 1902}
}
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What is A Double Barrelled Detective Story about?
It follows a young man with a bloodhound's sense of smell, trained by his mother to hunt a man who wronged her. The story then moves to a silver-mining camp, where an explosion draws Sherlock Holmes into a comic murder case.
Is Sherlock Holmes really in the book?
Yes, but this is Twain's comic version. The detective arrives at a mining camp, measures everything in sight, and announces a grand theory. The book mocks his famous method while keeping his famous manner and name.
Why is it called a double barrelled detective story?
The title points to a gun with two barrels. The book fires two stories at once: a long manhunt that begins in Virginia, and a murder puzzle in a California camp, both joined by one family and one gift.
The author
Mark Twain
1835–1910 · American humorist and novelist
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American author born in Missouri in 1835. He lived in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1874 to 1891. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Prince and the Pauper (1881). He died in Redding, Connecticut, in 1910.
More by Mark Twain
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