The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

The note from Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson cannot be ignored and soon the pair find themselves investigating the curious case of an aged professor whose sudden strange alteration in behaviour terrifies everyone from his daughter and her fiance to the family dog. This and eleven other cases which confound clients or perplex the police are tackled by Holmes and Watson in the final collection of the duo's detecting adventures. .

In The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes we read the last twelve stories Conan Doyle was to write about Holmes and Watson. They reflect the disillusioned world of the 1920s in which they were written, and he can be seen to take advantage of new, more open conventions in fiction. Suicide as a murder weapon and homosexual incest are some of the psychological tragedies whose consequences are unravelled by the mind of Holmes before the eyes of Watson. That said, the collection also includes some of the best turns of wit in the series, and indeed in the whole of English literature. The editor of this volume, W.W. Robson, is Emeritus David Masson, Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Modern English Literature. The general editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, Owen Dudley Edwards, is Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh and author of The Quest for Sherlock Holmes. A Biographical Study of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. .

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. Featuring the last 12 stories ever written about the infamous detective, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes contains some of Conan Doyle’s most villainous and unusual characters. The 1920s was a disenchanting era, and the darker mood of many of these stories reflects the environment at the time. Some even felt that the stories showed Conan Doyle exploring Spiritualism as it was an area he was interested in at the time and the mental derangement and physical disfigurements that crop up in many of the stories allude to the horrors of the First World War. The collection includes ‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’, ‘The Adventure of the Creeping Man’ and ‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane’. .