His Last Bow

This collection, first published as a book in 1917, opens with an exasperated Holmes grumbling over his sterile morning papers that all the audacity and romance seems to have vanished from the criminal world of London. But his mood is not to last for long. With the ushering in of Mr John Scott Eccles, dishevelled and almost incoherent in his attempt to splutter out an account of his mysterious night visit to Wisteria Lodge, Holmes is once again plunged headlong into the thick of a curious murder-case. The contraction of a rare Sumatran coolie disease and the uncovering of a fiendish device just in time to save a distinguished lady from premature burial are but two of the extra- ordinary episodes in this volume that merci- fully rescue Holmes from 'the insufferable fatigues of idleness' he laments at its beginning.