Dr. Watson was the chronicler of every Sherlock Holmes adventure published in The Strand magazine between 1887 and 1927. He reported them with honesty in the bluff, army-style of a military doctor, so frank in their account of human behaviour that they were too risque for the morals of Victorian England. George Newnes, the editor, purged each story before its publication. Newnes also replaced Watson’s jocular illustrations with Sidney Paget’s more innocuous portrayals.

Newnes deleted everybody’s backgrounds but in these accounts Watson reveals Holmes’s family: his father, Professor Julian Cornelius Bortzoy Holmes; his wife, Wendy; his sister, Rachel, as well as Mycroft. Watson also exposes Mrs. Hudson’s property empire and he tells us how Professor Moriarty became the Napoleon of crime. Some of this new material is shocking, even by today’s standards!

Book 4 synopsis, Mrs Hudson forces Holmes and Watson to settle a trivial feud. They embark upon an eventful railway journey to Ross-on-Wye where Inspector Lestrade is on the case of a brutal murder, which has taken place near a lake surrounded with dog turds. Lestrade has made some obvious conclusions to make a water-tight case against a young man but Sherlock Holmes dives into the undercurrent of local society and discovers a string of old relationships that tell a different story.