The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a 1905 collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903-1904, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories were published in the Strand Magazine in Britain and Collier's in the United States. But rather than take a break from Holmes, Conan Doyle decided that Holmes had to die. So, in a story titled "The Adventure of the Final Problem, " published 1893, Holmes dies after falling off a cliff while battling his arch-nemesis, the evil Professor Moriarty. ... And this is pretty much what happened after Holmes died.