The Sign of the Four

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Overview

The Sign of the Four hides a secret pact among four convicts and two corrupt prison guards. According to Mary Morstan, her father requested her to meet him at the Langham Hotel in London upon his safe return from India. When Mary arrived at the hotel, she was told her father had gone out the previous night and not returned. Despite all efforts, no trace has ever been found of him. The second puzzle is that she has received six pearls in the mail from an anonymous benefactor, one per year since 1882. With the last pearl she received a letter remarking that she has been wronged and asking for a meeting. Holmes takes the case and soon discovers that Major Sholto, a friend of Mary's father, had died in 1882 and that within a short span of time Mary began to receive the pearls, implying a connection. The only clue Mary can give Holmes is a map of a fortress found in her father's desk with four names.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788027333080
Publisher:	E-Artnow
Publication date:	04/15/2019
Pages:	92
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.19(d)

About the Author

Arthur Conan Doyle

Caroline Reitz is Associate Professor of English literature at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the City University of New York Graduate Center. She specializes in Victorian literature and culture as well as contemporary female detective fiction and is co-editor of Dickens Studies Annual. She is the author of Detecting the Nation: Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture (2004) and numerous journal articles and chapters.

Darryl Jones (General Editor) is Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches nineteenth-century literature and popular fiction. He is the author or editor of ten books, including the Oxford World Classics editions of M. R. James's Collected Ghost Stories, Arthur Conan Doyle's Gothic Tales, H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau, as well as Horror: A Very Short Introduction.

Date of Birth:

May 22, 1859

Date of Death:

July 7, 1930

Place of Birth:

Edinburgh, Scotland

Place of Death:

Crowborough, Sussex, England

Education:

Edinburgh University, B.M., 1881; M.D., 1885

Table of Contents

IntroductionNote on the TextSelect BibliographyChronologyThe Sign of the FourExplanatory Notes

Editorial Reviews

Of all the Holmes stories it is The Sign of the Four which remains persistently in my memory.”

Graham Greene

In The Sign of the Four Sir Arthur Conan Doyle weaves a story that stretches from London to India…Holmes finds himself enmeshed in a crime involving two murders, a wooden-legged man, a budding love story, and the theft of an Indian treasure. Add to this a depiction of Colonial India during the time of the 1857 rebellion and you have one of the more intriguing Holmes stories…Three-time Audie nominee, Ralph Cosham, in a voice reminiscent of Nigel Bruce who played Dr. Watson in early Hollywood films of the Holmes canon, brings the right tenor and feeling to the work. This is classic, well executed and well worth visiting again.”

SoundCommentary.com