The first Sherlock Holmes story was published by its author, Arthur Conan Doyle, in 1887. For forty years (including the gap where he killed off his hero and had, by popular demand, to bring him back to life again) Arthur Conan Doyle continued with novels and tales about the famous detective and his friend and biographer, Dr John Watson. Yet Sherlock Holmes exists in something of a vacuum. We are never told anything about his parents or early life. It’s not until quite late in the saga that Sherlock even reveals to Dr Watson the existence of his equally brilliant brother, Mycroft.
Nevertheless, man without a past though he may be, Sherlock lives. And I have taken the liberty now, over a hundred years after his invention, to add a third member to the Holmes clan. This is Charlotte, also a clever scientific detective. Readers will find a portrait of the family as children described in the early pages of this book – Mycroft with butterfly net, Sherlock with telescope and little Charlotte on the grass at their feet, reading …