His Last BowSome Reminiscences of Sherlock Holme
During the dark days of World War I, a young British soldier asked Arthur Conan Doyle what Sherlock Holmes was doing to assist in the war effort. That encounter reputedly inspired the story "His Last Bow," in which the celebrated detective is drawn from his retirement to reunite with the ever-faithful Dr. Watson for their final challenge, unmasking a German spy.
Seven additional short stories, originally published in The StrandMagazine, recount episodes leading up to the master sleuth's grand finale. "The Bruce-Partington Plans," also involves espionage, this time in an earlier setting and concerning the recovery of purloined plans for building a submarine. Other mysteries find Watson and Holmes pursuing a deposed dictator, unraveling a crime of passion, tracking down a foreign crime syndicate, outwitting a poisoner, investigating an heiress's disappearance, and interrupting their vacation in Cornwall to solve a devilish case of murder and madness.
Contents
1. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
2. The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
3. The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
4. The Adventure of the Red Circle
5. The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
6. The Adventure of the Dying Detective
7. His Last Bow
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Long before crime fiction became a genre, there was Sherlock Holmes—and behind him, the mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: physician, spiritualist, and literary architect of deduction itself. He didn’t just create a detective; he carved out an entire way of thinking, a cold, rational clarity that sliced through Victorian fog like a magnifying glass catching the morning sun.
Born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Doyle was a man of science before he was a man of letters. Trained as a doctor, he brought a clinical precision to his writing that made Holmes’s logic feel almost forensic in an age when forensic science was still in its infancy. The A Study in Scarlet debut in 1887 wasn’t just the birth of a character—it was the birth of modern detective fiction. And yet, Doyle always saw Holmes as a side project. It was his historical novels, like The White Company, that he considered his serious work.
Sherlock Holmes - The Original Stories
The original Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all of which were serialised in popular magazines of the time prior to being published in book form.
Sherlock Holmes - The Original Stories consists of nine books and considered as a complete series. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
