'"Is it really possible, do you suppose," said Sherlock Holmes to me one morning, as we took breakfast together, "that a healthy and robust man may be so stricken with terror that he drops down dead?"' So begins 'The Adventure of the Brown Box'. Even better than his first collection, twelve new stories from the much praised Denis O. Smith, including 'The Adventure of the Velvet Mask', 'The Adventure of the Tomb on the Hill', and 'The Secret of Shoreswood Hall'.Smith's stories are of the sort most eagerly devoured by avid fans of Holmes and Dr Watson: a would-be client tells Holmes a strange tale, and he is drawn in to a seemingly impenetrable mystery. Whether in the shrouding fog of London, or far from the city, deep in the countryside, these fast-paced stories, set in the late nineteenth century, before Holmes's disappearance at the Reichenbach Falls, recreate with wonderful fidelity the world of Conan Doyle's best Holmes stories. This captivating anthology brings to a new audience the very best of Denis O. Smith's work in a satisfyingly hefty compendium.
