As Watson falls in love and Sherlock Holmes battles his darker habits, the two men once again tackle a case of baffling complexity.
'Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement'.
Whilst the seamy streets of London drown in a sea of smog, Sherlock Holmes sinks into a cocaine-induced melancholy, until Miss Mary Morstan presents him with a most intriguing case. A terrible death, an unknown benefactor, stolen treasure, and a secret pact between criminals stretching back to a mutiny-torn India, lead Holmes into an epic pursuit of the truth.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 -1930) was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.
The first two Sherlock Holmes novels, A STUDY IN SCARLET and THE SIGN OF FOUR, were published in 1887 and 1890, but it was the publication in the STRAND MAGAZINE from 1891 onwards of the immortal short stories, starting with 'A Scandal in Bohemia', that brought him real fame. The complete canon was voted the greatest crime series of all time by the Mystery Writers of America.