Criticism published between 2011 and 2020 followed practices established in the preceding two decades, focusing on aspects of Doyle's fiction that reveal his and his countrymen's concerns for the literary, social, political, and cultural issues that define the era in which he wrote. One finds in criticism produced during this decade a growing level of sophistication by scholars who apply advances in literary theory to close reading of Doyle's texts, often combining theoretical approaches that produce new insights into his body of work.

An excellent example of this kind of sophisticated scholarship is Daniel Cottom's essay “Sherlock Holmes Meets Dracula” (2012). Cottom's comparative study highlights the striking differences between two popular characters that represent what Cottom describes as the poles of bohemianism: Dracula the “fantasized origin,” Holmes its “fantastic end” (537). His careful study of these larger-than-life figures demonstrates the importance of bohemianism to Doyle and his contemporaries: in tales featuring these unconventional characters, “the fate of modern civilization is put at risk,” and their stories highlight how “the definitively marginal figure of the bohemian is central to the history of modernity” (537). Cottom argues that Holmes represents the late bohemian, “singular, irreplaceable, and bored almost to death” (553), who “represents art to a philistine society” (553); in his methods, “style is what is all important” (555). Part of the pleasure of reading the Holmes stories lies in the repetition of the pattern of the bohemian encountering the trivialities of life and overcoming middle-class problems with seemingly superhuman powers. “But the paradoxical position” in which Holmes finds himself is one of “fighting what he loves and upholding what he hates” (557). Doyle's genius in creating his detective was “to make an antisocial, misogynistic, drug-addicted, perverted bohemian the only person able to know society” in all its complexities (558). “Unpredictable and irreplicable,” Holmes marks “the end of any confidence in the very existence of the social order against which the figure of the bohemian has been historically articulated” (561). Cottom's careful explication of the role Holmes plays in signaling the end of an era when a single individual might comprehend all facets of society adds a touch of gravitas to Doyle's detective fiction and suggests that careful study of it might lead to new insights into the social and cultural phenomena that defined late-century Victorian England as it grappled with the advance of modernity.