The Sign of Four: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery

In 1890 Arthur Conan Doyle followed up the 1887 debut of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet with The Sign of Four. Revealing the darker side of Holmes' s personal habits, the story introduces us to Watson' s future wife, the lovely young Mary Morstan, and plunges the now-famous detective and his companion into a case involving stolen treasure, an eerie locked-room murder, a one-legged man, the Afghan War, and a thrilling midnight chase down the Thames. An overlooked gem, The Sign of Four may be the finest of Conan Doyle' s book-length Sherlock Holmes mysteries.