The Sign of Four

By Arthur Conan Doyle,

Book cover of The Sign of Four

Book description

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked The Sign of Four as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I know it’s a bit of a cheat to have Sherlock Holmes here as he’s one of, if not the most famous detective in all of fiction.

However, he’s not an official cop so I’m claiming him for my list.

I remember being gifted a complete works of ACD when I was around 14 for a birthday. And I absolutely adored it from the off.

Like so many other crime and mystery writers, the Sherlock Holmes stories have been a constant, a mainstay throughout my career.

The Sign of Four is the second adventure with Holmes and Watson. And I…

From Jonathan's list on sleuths who aren't cops.

The basic idea of the story is vengeance for injustices done by greedy people who took advantage of the mutiny to perpetrate them. Characters involved in this mutiny seek revenge years later against those who wronged them. This book helped me develop characters and the reason for the murders using the Indian mutiny as a background for my novel. For those who like crime novels with a historical event as a setting, will like the way Sir Arthur Conan Doyle incorporates that in his book. It also gives the readers a valuable lesson that there are consequences for our actions…

A one-legged man and a tiny creature. Only Sherlock Holmes could discern from the smallest and strangest of clues what happened to the stolen treasure of Agra brought back to England by four men united by greed. Arthur Conan Doyle was a master at providing all the clues you need to solve the mystery, while making the solution so incredible that you refuse to accept it until he lays it out for you.  

From M.S.'s list on treasure hunts.

Book cover of The Spanish Diplomat's Secret

Nev March Author Of The Spanish Diplomat's Secret

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author History lover Scriptwriter Reader Nature lover

Nev's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

An entertaining mystery on a 1894 trans-Atlantic steamship with an varied array of suspects, and a detective who must solve his case in six days to prevent international conflict.

Retired from the British Indian army, Captain Jim is taking his wife Diana to Liverpool from New York, when their pleasant cruise turns deadly. Just hours after meeting him, a foreign diplomat is brutally murdered onboard their ship. Captain Jim must find the killer before they dock in six days, or there could be war! Aboard the beleaguered luxury liner are a thousand suspects, but no witnesses to the locked-cabin crime.

Fortunately, his wife Diana knows her way around first-class accommodations and Gilded Age society. But something has been troubling her, too, something she won’t tell him. Together, using tricks gleaned from their favorite fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Jim, and Diana must learn why one man’s life came to a murderous end.

By Nev March,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Spanish Diplomat's Secret as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In The Spanish Diplomat's Secret, award-winning author Nev March explores the vivid nineteenth-century world of the transatlantic voyage, one passenger’s secret at a time.

Captain Jim Agnihotri and his wife Lady Diana Framji are embarking to England in the summer of 1894. Jim is hopeful the cruise will help Diana open up to him. Something is troubling her, and Jim is concerned.

On their first evening, Jim meets an intriguing Spaniard, a fellow soldier with whom he finds an instant kinship. But within twenty-four hours, Don Juan Nepomuceno is murdered, his body discovered shortly after he asks rather urgently to…


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