Detective stories | The Red Headed League |

"The Red-Headed League" (also known as "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League") is a Sherlock Holmes short storyby the British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in the August 1891 edition of the magazine The Strand. It would be republished in October 1892 as the second story in the anthology The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.


The plot is set in motion when a red-haired pawnbroker named Jabez Wilson asks Sherlock Holmes to investigate the sudden disappearance of a society called the Red-Headed League. For two months, the Red-Haired League paid Wilson well for doing very little work. Jabez Wilson is primarily concerned with the loss of a lucrative second income but also suspects that a prank of some kind may have been played upon him. Holmes, however, believes that the prank may be part of a plan for a much more serious crime.