Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes ed. by Janice M. Allan and Christopher Pittard Tom Ue (bio) The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes, edited by Janice M. Allan and Christopher Pittard; pp. xix + 261. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019, £14.99, $19.99. In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02), Dr. Watson returns home one night thinking "that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it" (edited by W. W. Robson, [Oxford University Press, 2008], 26). His flatmate, Sherlock Holmes, is deep in thought and has been smoking away, the fumes in their apartment operating as a metaphor for the opacity of the case in hand. Earlier that day, Dr. Mortimer had approached them for advice: his friend Sir Charles died under suspicious circumstances, possibly connected to a family curse, and now his nephew and heir Sir Henry is to take up residence at the estate. Small wonder that Holmes is so perplexed: is there even a mystery? The only irregularities seem to be a handful of paw prints and hound sightings, Sir Charles's tiptoed footprints, and the report of cries. Surrounded with maps, Holmes curls up in his armchair, and describes to Watson an imaginative trip that he has taken as if he has had no control over his body's actions: "My body has remained in this arm-chair. … After you left I sent down to Stanford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about" (The Hound of the Baskervilles edited by W. W. Robson, [Oxford University Press, 2008], 26–27). As coeditor, with Christopher Pittard, of The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes, Janice M. Allan notes in her insightful chapter that this scene has been interpreted many [End Page 303] times, for "it challenges the science/superstition binary that structures the novel" (170). The panoptic vision invoked here, which prioritizes seeing and reading, seems incongruous with the out-of-body experience that Holmes describes, one that "hints at Doyle's commitment to spiritualism." The scene economically registers "the extent to which the novel depends upon a binary only to call it into question." Allan concentrates on the map, which falls short of capturing the real Dartmoor: it "frames and delimits the space it represents," "construct[ing]," as it were, "the district as a contained and quantifiable space; a solid foundation upon which interpretation and meaning can be built" (171). The map can be taken as an analogy for how the detective thinks, and so its limitations foreground his: "like the map itself, [Holmes's narrative] fails to capture the jagged heights and treacherous lows of [the] adventure on the moors" (179). The implications are many. One has only to consider, for example, Holmes's treatment of the case's aftermath. The novel's final chapter, "A Retrospection," moves the narrative forward from mid-October to the end of November, and we return to Holmes and Watson's quarters in 221B Baker Street. Throughout the novel, Holmes routinely laments the shortage of evidence to prove his case against Stapleton. "A Retrospection" reveals just how poorly he handles evidence even when it lies within his grasp. Aside from Miss Stapleton, Anthony—the Stapletons' old manservant—is the only surviving witness able to provide information and to corroborate her account; yet he "has disappeared and has escaped from the country" (The Hound of the Baskervilles edited by W. W. Robson, [Oxford University Press, 2008], 164). Despite two conversations with Miss Stapleton, Holmes does not ask her about the Stapletons' "school, which had begun well, [but which] sank from disrepute into infamy" (The Hound of the Baskervilles edited by W. W. Robson, [Oxford University Press, 2008], 159); about her husband's possible involvement in "four considerable burglaries in the West Country," the last of which "was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling of the page" (The Hound of the Baskervilles edited by W. W. Robson, [Oxford University Press, 2008], 163...