Book description
The hit BBC series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch,
offers a fresh, contemporary take on the original Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle stories, and has helped introduce a whole new generation of fans
to the legendary detective.
In this TV tie-in edition to the classic novel, Sherlock and Dr
Watson receive a visit from Mary Morsten, who offers up a particularly
cryptic puzzle for them to solve. Her father went missing six years
ago and since then she has received a pearl for every year he has not
re-appeared. Now, the treasure's sender has requested a meeting and
she would like Sherlock and Watson to accompany her. Finding the
mystery benefactor is only the start of this adventure, that puts
Sherlock and Watson hot on the trail of cold-blooded killers and
thieves, and a lost Indian fortune.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. He trained
as a doctor at Edinburgh University and it was during this time that
he witnessed methods of diagnosis that would later inspire Sherlock
Holmes' astonishing methods of deduction. A Study in Scarlet
was Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel, published in 1887, but
it was The Sign of Four, published in 1890, that catapulted him
to worldwide fame.
From 1891 he wrote short stories about the immortal detective for
The Strand magazine. He attempted to kill off Sherlock Holmes
in 1893, in The Final Problem, but was forced to revive him
after thousands of complaints. Conan Doyle died in 1930 having written
two more Sherlock Holmes novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles
and The Valley of Fear, both serialized in The Strand,
and a total of 56 short stories. Not only the master of popular crime
fiction, he also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel, The
Lost World from the Professor Challenger series.
