The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

The final Sherlock Holmes collection brings together twelve cases first published during the 1920s. Holmes confronts a murderous aristocratic seducer in “The Illustrious Client”, investigates an apparently supernatural attack in “The Sussex Vampire”, unravels the disappearance of a valuable jewel in “The Mazarin Stone” and examines crimes involving inheritance, jealousy, blackmail, disputed identity and concealed domestic violence. The stories retain the Baker Street partnership while moving among London houses, country estates, racing stables and Holmes’s retirement on the Sussex coast.

The collection also experiments with narration and with the limits of Holmes’s method. Holmes himself recounts “The Blanched Soldier” and “The Lion’s Mane”, while “The Creeping Man” uses speculative science and “The Sussex Vampire” replaces Gothic suspicion with a material explanation. Published as a volume in 1927, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is the ninth and final principal book in the canon, presenting an older detective whose confidence and theatrical ingenuity remain intact even as Watson appears less consistently at his side.