Mr Pendleton-Smythe, an excluded schoolboy turned military man, visits Holmes surreptitiously having been hiding out of fear for his life. Holmes quickly discovers the unfortunate outcomes of this man's adolescent decisions when he discovers Pendleton-Smythe's participation in the Amateur Mendicant Society, the membership of which has been rapidly declining of late.

After Arthur Conan Doyle created the detective, Sherlock Holmes, many writers borrowed him to be the hero of their stories. The anthology offers a selection, old and new.

“Unrecorded” cases of the world's greatest detective are found in this collection of original fiction by Stephen Baxter, Michael Moorcock, H.R.F. Keating, and more. The stories are linked by a running biography of Sherlock Holmes, identifying the “gaps” in the canon.