The number of cases Sherlock Holmes tackled is unknown. Between them, Dr Watson and the famous detective wrote up fifty-six as short stories and a further four as full-length novels. However, in ‘The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist’, the doctor mentions taking ‘very full notes’ on ‘hundreds of private cases’ undertaken by Holmes between 1894 and 1901.
Imagine my surprise and delight, therefore, when an unknown benefactor left on my doorstep a large bundle of Watson’s original work relating to many of the cases that had never made it into the novels or collections of stories.
What was I to do with them? At first, I considered expanding them into a new casebook, reproducing as closely as possible the style of the original. The idea did not last long. I feel a strong antipathy towards pastiche, and believe that adding to the Collected Works would be akin to desecration.
The notes could have been published unedited, in the disorderly form in which I found them, but the result would have been of interest only to scholars and obsessive Holmesians. The solution I eventually hit upon arose as I considered how Sherlock Holmes’s timeless appeal rested largely on the enjoyment readers took from his extraordinary crime-solving powers.
Holmes’s success rested on (i) his remarkable powers of deduction, founded solely on reason, and (ii) a formidable bank of information stored within his computer-like brain. (Interestingly, as I read through the notes, I found myself concurring with Watson’s observation in A Study in Scarlet: Holmes’s knowledge, like that of an encyclopaedia with some of its pages missing, had surprising gaps.)
This proviso notwithstanding, my presentation of the twenty-five new cases in this book focuses on Holmes’s world-famous ability to solve crimes through logical reasoning and knowledge. Each story is set out in two parts. The narrative at the front of the book contains the information Holmes required to do his job. Watson’s notes, though full, do not display the range of colourful detail – descriptions of Holmes’s room in Baker Street, for example – that he used to turn cases into detective stories. In general, therefore, I have resisted the temptation to embellish objective fact with imaginative fiction. Words taken verbatim from Watson’s notes are set out as quotes. Elsewhere we have used standard contemporary English, moderating it where appropriate to suit the epoch and subject matter.
I invite you, using the techniques Holmes made famous, to uncover for yourself the evidence in each story and use it to unravel the mystery. When you believe you have done so, turn to the back of the book. There you will find out how Holmes correctly interpreted the facts to solve twenty-four of the twenty-five cases.
Perhaps you can go one better? Good luck!
Stewart Ross