Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Summary

‘Am dining at Goldini’s Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver – S. H.’

The game's afoot for the most famous amateur detective of all time in this collection of eight of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tales.

The Speckled Band’, a Victorian melodrama in a country house, comes complete with murderous villain, murdered heroine, and a very unpleasant snake; ‘Silver Blaze’ tells of a missing race horse on Dartmoor which turns out not to be missing at all, and a murder that never was. In ‘The Redheaded League’ a pawnbroker answers an advertisement for a red-headed man and bizarrely finds himself copying out the Encyclopedia Britannica; in ‘The Bruce Partington Plans’ Holmes is skulking in the London Underground with a dead body when his patriotic services are called upon to find some stolen state secrets in the run-up to World War I.

Sidney Paget was the original illustrator and helped to form the image of Sherlock Holmes which exists to this day - in fact, it was he who created the famous deer-stalker!

About the authors

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh where he qualified as a doctor, but it was his writing which brought him fame, with the creation of Sherlock Holmes, the first scientific detective. He was also a convert to spiritualism and a social reformer who used his investigative skills to prove the innocence of individuals.
Learn More

Sidney Paget (Illustrator)

Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more