His friend and cohort Dr. Watson called him the "most perfect reasoning machine the world has seen. " Sherlock Holmes, the eccentric, pipe-smoking Londoner with an encyclopedic knowledge of almost every field, could build a solution on the thinnest thread of a clue, and use it to bring any criminal to justice. In this volume are collected seven of the most thrilling of the Sherlock Holmes stories. With the cunning of a fox and the courtesy of an English gentleman, Holmes uses his miraculous powers of observation to save a king from blackmail, capture England's most wanted and feared bank robber, and reduce the identity of a mysterious man who has left his fiancee at the altar. With Watson as a sounding board for his questions and an accomplice to his machinations, Holmes is virtually unstoppable as a detective, even in the most baffling circumstances. Yet in "A Scandal in Bohemia" he meets the woman, a foe whose beautiful face hides a mind that might be one step ahead of his own. Each chapter provides a new adventure, and each case--seemingly more obscure and hopeless than the last--never proves too difficult for Sherlock Holmes. (jacket)
