About This Book

This second collection of eleven Sherlock Holmes greats includes "The Greek Interpreter," "The Yellow Face," and Holmes' final, terrible battle with the arch-criminal, Dr. Moriarty, during which Holmes plunges into the abyss!

About Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

(1859-1930) Most readers know English writer Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, with his hawkish profile and rapier-quick mind. Many also know that Doyle was a doctor before he was a writer, and thus in real life more like Watson than Holmes. But fewer know that his 1902 knighthood was conferred, not because he was the creator of the Great Detective, but to acknowledge his outstanding medical work with the Langman field hospital during the Bloemfontein, and a history of the Boer War in 1900, and a pamphlet (a small monograph on the subject?) written in 1902, defending the actions of the British army.

He also worked with the Congo Reform Association, and (like Holmes) undertook inquiries into two notable miscarriages of justice. As a historian, wrote, in addition to his numerous mystery stories, a scholarly history of the Napoleonic Wars. Later in life he became interested in spiritualism, and set aside most of his writing to follow that new interest.

But it is for the incomparable Holmes that we now remember him. The Sherlock Holmes stories have remained in print since they first appeared in 1887. Several films and more than one television series have been based on his exploits. And numerous of organizations still commemorate this wholly fictional, but eternally fascinating character — The Baker Street Irregulars and The Neglected Patients of Doctor Watson, to name but two.