Book description
Sherlock Holmes is not only the most famous character in crime fiction,
but arguably the most famous character in all fiction. In sixty
adventures that pit his extraordinary wits and courage against foreign
spies, blackmailers, cultists, petty thieves, murderers, swindlers,
policemen (both stupid and clever), and his arch-nemesis Moriarty,
Sherlock Holmes, together with his faithful sidekick Doctor John H.
Watson, proves himself to be not only the quintessential detective but
also the most engaging and entertaining company any reader could ask
for. This beautiful new edition contains a new foreword by Ruth Rendell
Now, as in his lifetime, cab drivers, statesmen, academics, and
raggedy-arsed children sit spellbound at his feet... No wonder, then, if
the pairing of Holmes and Watson has triggered more imitators than any
other duo in literature Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) studied
medicine at Edinburgh University, where he became the clerk to a surgeon
whose diagnostic methods provided the model for the science of deduction
perfected by Sherlock Holmes. He set up as a doctor and it was while
waiting for patients that he began to write. Sherlock Holmes first
appeared in
A Study in Scarlet
(1887). The Holmes stories soon attracted such a following that Conan
Doyle felt the character overshadowed his other work. In The Final Problem
(1893) Conan Doyle killed him off, but was obliged by public demand to
restore the detective to life.
