To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

This collection includes many of the famous cases - and great strokes of brilliance - that made the legendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction's most popular creations. With his devoted amanuensis, Dr Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke filled rooms in Baker Street to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue and evil in such cases as 'The Speckled Band', in which a terrified woman begs their help in solving the mystery surrounding her sister's death, or 'A Scandal in Bohemia', which portrays a European king blackmailed by his mistress. In 'Silver Blaze' the pair investigate the disappearance of a racehorse and the violent murder of its trainer, while in 'The Final Problem' Holmes at last comes face to face with his nemesis, the diabolical Professor Moriarty - 'the Napoleon of crime'.