Sherlock Holmes

âAm dining at Goldiniâs Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver â" S. H.â

The game''s afoot for the most famous amateur detective of all time in this collection of eight of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle''s classic tales.

âThe Speckled Bandâ, a Victorian melodrama in a country house, comes complete with murderous villain, murdered heroine, and a very unpleasant snake; âSilver Blazeâ tells of a missing race horse on Dartmoor which turns out not to be missing at all, and a murder that never was. In âThe Redheaded Leagueâ a pawnbroker answers an advertisement for a red-headed man and bizarrely finds himself copying out the Encyclopedia Britannica; in âThe Bruce Partington Plansâ Holmes is skulking in the London Underground with a dead body when his patriotic services are called upon to find some stolen state secrets in the run-up to World War I.

Sidney Paget was the original illustrator and helped to form the image of Sherlock Holmes which exists to this day - in fact, it was he who created the famous deer-stalker!