Sherlock Holmes: His Last Bow
Arthur Conan Doyle's Fourth Holmes Short Story Collection
Dec 28, 2008
Created by Scottish author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant London-based consulting detective, famous for his intellectual prowess and powers of deductive reasoning.
His Last Bow is the fourth of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short story collections and features eight mysterious tales:
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
This is a two-part story consisting of 'The Singular Experience of Mr John Scott Eccles' and 'The Tiger of San Pedro'. First, as Eccles arrives to ask the advice of Sherlock Holmes, so to do the police. They wish to question Eccles about the murder of Aloysius Garcia’s murder. Eccles had stayed at Garcia’s house the night before but awoke to find himself in an empty house, Garcia and all his servants had vanished.
In the second part, Holmes and Watson travel to Wisteria Lodge and hear from the constable guarding the house that a brutish looking man has been lurking about since the murder of Garcia. The police think this man must be the murderer but Holmes is not so sure.
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
Susan Cushing receives a parcel in the post that contains two severed human ears packed in coarse salt. The police think that it is a prank but, after examining the parcel, Sherlock Holmes is convinced that a serious crime has taken place.
The Adventure of the Red Circle
Mrs Warren wants Holmes to investigate her lodger. The man spoke excellent English but with a foreign accent and agreed to pay double the rent provided he could have the room on his own terms. He went out the first night after taking the room, returned about midnight and, since then, no one in the household has seen him. He has the newspaper delivered to his door every morning and, whenever he needs anything, he leaves a printed note outside the door.
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
Mycroft Holmes needs his brother’s help in recovering some stolen submarine plans and solving the murder of a young government clerk.
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
Doctor Watson is called to attend Sherlock Holmes who is apparently dying of a rare Asian disease that he contracted while working on a case in Rotherhithe. Holmes will not let Watson treat him and permits him only to seek help from one specifically named person, Culverton Smith, a supposed expert on the illness that plagues Holmes.
The Disappearance of Lady Francis Carfax
Holmes is busy in London and so he sends Doctor Watson to investigate the disappearance of Lady Francis Carfax. Lady Francis is a rich lady travelling with her maid who has not contacted her friends or been seen in person for five weeks.
The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
While in Cornwell, Holmes and Watson are approached by Mortimer Tregennis whose family have suffered a terrible blow. His two brothers appear to have gone mad and his sister is dead. Tregennis had spent the evening with his siblings and had returned to the house the next day to find them all still in the same room, his sister dead in a chair and his brothers laughing like madmen.
His Last Bow
On the eve of the First World War, German spy Von Bork prepares to leave the country with the intelligence he has gathered. Von Bork indicates to a friend that is just waiting for one last meeting with an American informant, Altamont, and then he will leave. Altamont arrives but there is more to him than meets the eye.
His Last Bow is followed by Arthur Conan Doyle’s fifth and final Sherlock Holmes short story collection, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
His Last Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN 978-0755334438, Headline Review, 2006, £4.99, pp 242
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