Sherlock Holmes on Her Majesty's Secret Service

This compelling collection brings Baker Street's celebrated resident and his cohort, Dr Watson, out of retirement to investigate seven of the most notorious mysteries in the annals of true crime, from the murder of a London prostitute to the 1907 theft of the Irish Crown Jewels.

Six new tales of crime presented by Dr Watson from the documents of Sherlock Holmes, which follow on from The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes. What were Holmes's views on Dr Crippen? What happened when Oscar Wilde visited Baker Street to seek advice? How did Holmes reveal a loving husband to be one of the most dangerous psychopaths of modern times? And just what horrors await Holmes in the darkened slums of Waterloo Road?

Drugged, manacled, condemned to a dank cell in the depths of London's infamous Newgate prison, the world's greatest literary detective awaits execution by a vengeful crew of formidable enemies. Escape is impossible; death, a certainty. But not for Sherlock Holmes, who, in a stunning display of intellect and derring-do, will elude his hangman's noose and live to fiddle, spy, and ratiocinate another day.

In these five tales, Sherlock Holmes is shown at the height of his powers: he co-operates with a young Winston Churchill in the famed Siege of Sydney Street, helps defeat a plan for a German invasion outlined in the Zimmerman Telegram, establishes a link between two missing lighthouse keepers and the royal treasures of King John, contends with a supernatural curse places upon an eccentric aristocrat, and discovers a lost epic of Lord Byron.

"Have you ever seen a ghost, Mr. Holmes?" asks Victoria Temple, and Sherlock Holmes, at the height of his powers in 1898, must face a new challenge, one that plunges the great detective into the realm of the supernatural. Miss Temple has been found guilty - but also insane - at her trial for murdering a child under her care. She is locked away in the Broadmoor lunatic asylum, and worse still, she believes fully in her own guilt....

In a momentous period of British history, Donald Thomas' latest Sherlock Holmes adventure pits the great detective and his faithful biographer, Dr. John Watson, against an international conspiracy led by a disgraced English officer. Colonel Hunter Moran bears upon him the "Mark of the Beast"; his satanic ingenuity leaves a spectacular trail of devastation. It runs from the annihilation of a British armored column by Zulu tribesmen - armed only with shields and spears - to a life-and-death struggle on the sinking passenger steamer Comtesse de Flandre.