His Last Bow

His Last Bow gathers later cases from Holmes’s career, moving from murder and disappearance to threats involving international politics and modern technology. Wisteria Lodge begins in 1892 with a killing connected to the former dictatorship of the fictional Central American state of San Pedro; The Bruce-Partington Plans concerns stolen submarine designs and espionage at Woolwich; and The Devil’s Foot follows a lethal experiment in Cornwall. Other stories involve an Italian secret society, a missing aristocratic woman and an attempted murder by tropical disease.

The title story is set on 2 August 1914 during the July Crisis. Holmes comes out of retirement and spends years undercover inside a German intelligence network, allowing him and Watson to capture the agent Von Bork and recover information gathered for the Kaiser. The ending carries the detective beyond private crime into wartime service, using espionage and the approaching First World War to close the chronological arc of his partnership with Watson.