The Sherlock Holmes Companion

Sherlock Holmes remains as popular, and as fascinating, now as he ever did. Now, in this beautiful and lavishly illustrated book, Daniel Smith explores Sherlock Holmes and his world in every engrossing respect. The Sherlock Holmes Companion, a witty and informed text, provides plot summaries of every single Sherlock Holmes story, in the order in which they were written, and with good-humored and even waspish assessments of their relative merits. There are compact biographies of Holmes, Moriarty, Watson, and Conan Doyle—whose own life and earnest preoccupations remain of enduring interest. The book contains many original interviews with some of the actors who’ve played Holmes, or written film or television scripts about him, over the years as well as a comprehensive chronology of all the thespians to attempt a portrayal of Holmes, from Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett to Stewart Granger.

If you want to know the different kinds of firearms ever toted by Holmes, or when he first took to sporting a deerstalker, or how often the examination of footprints facilitated the successful solution of a case, or when Roger Moore played Holmes or Robert Duvall Watson and why, then this book is for you. Illustrated throughout with more than 150 pictures—half in full color—ranging from period engravings, gorgeous theatre posters and book jackets to modern-day location shots and film stills from TV adaptations, The Sherlock Holmes Companion is a compendious guide to all the stories, their author and the enigmatic pipe-smoking creation at their heart.