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A coded warning from an informer inside Professor Moriarty's organisation reaches Baker Street too late: a man named John Douglas has been found shot in his…
A coded warning from an informer inside Professor Moriarty's organisation reaches Baker Street too late: a man named John Douglas has been found shot in his moated manor house at Birlstone. Holmes and Watson investigate a locked-room puzzle full of strange details, a missing dumbbell, a wedding ring taken from the victim's finger, and a card bearing the letters V.V. 341.
Context and significance
Published in 1915, this is the last of the four Holmes novels. Like A Study in Scarlet, it moves halfway through to America, here to the coal valleys of Pennsylvania and a secret society inspired by the real Molly Maguires, with a tense undercover story that many readers think the best part of the book.
About the author
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh, trained as a doctor and wrote stories while waiting for patients at his practice in Southsea. Sherlock Holmes, modelled partly on his old teacher Joseph Bell, who could diagnose a patient's life at a glance, first appeared in 1887 and soon made Doyle one of the best-paid writers in the world.