The Adventure of the Illustrious Client: (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

By Arthur Conan Doyle

Featuring an anonymous client and a trail of murderous crimes, delve into the thrilling depths of Victorian England in this short Sherlock Holmes story.

The city of London is shrouded in a thick fog, concealing dark secrets and deadly schemes, when a British officer arrives at Baker Street. When he begs Sherlock Holmes to help save his illustrious client, the detective can’t refuse. A sinister plot of love, deception, and murder begins to unravel as Holmes and Watson investigate the complex mystery. They face a series of challenges and obstacles, each more dangerous than the last, as they race against time.

First published in 1924, ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’ was one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s last Sherlock Holmes stories. Fantasy and Horror Classics is proud to be republishing this story in a brand new edition featuring a specially commissioned introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781447480051

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish writer and physician, most famous for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes and long-suffering sidekick Dr Watson. Conan Doyle was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

Book preview

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. It was between 1876 and 1881, while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, that he began writing short stories, and his first piece was published in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal before he was 20. In 1882, Conan Doyle opened an independent medical practice in Southsea, near Portsmouth. It was here, while waiting for patients, that he turned to writing fiction again, composing his first novel, The Narrative of John Smith.

In 1887, Conan Doyle’s first significant work, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. It featured the first appearance of detective Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist who was to eventually make Conan Doyle’s reputation. A prolific writer, Conan Doyle continued to produce a range of fictional works over the following years. In 1893, feeling that the character of Sherlock Holmes was distracting him from his historical novels, he had Holmes apparendy plunge to his death in the short story ‘The Final Problem’. However, eight years later, following a public outcry from his readers, Conan Doyle ‘resurrected’ the detective in what is now widely regarded as his magnum opus, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Sherlock Holmes went on to feature in fifty-six short stories and four novels, cementing Conan Doyle’s reputation as probably the most famous crime writer of all time. Aside from his fiction, Conan Doyle was also a passionate political campaigner – a pamphlet he published in 1902, defending the United Kingdom’s much-criticised role in the Boer War, is seen as a major contributor to his receiving of a knighthood in that same year.

In his later years, following the death of his son in World War I, Conan Doyle became deeply interested in spiritualism and psychic phenomena, producing several works on the subjects and engaging in a very public friendship and falling out with the American magician Harry Houdini. He died of a heart attack while living in East Sussex in 1930, aged 71.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS CLIENT

It can’t hurt now, was Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s comment when, for the tenth time in as many years, I asked his leave to reveal the following narrative. So it was that at last I obtained permission to put on record what was, in some ways, the supreme moment of my friend’s career.

Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else. On the upper floor of the Northumberland Avenue establishment there is an isolated corner where two couches lie side by side, and it was on these that we lay upon September 3, 1902, the day when my narrative begins. I had asked him whether anything was stirring, and for answer he had shot his long, thin, nervous arm out of the sheets which enveloped him and had drawn an envelope from the inside pocket of the coat which hung beside him.

Collier’s Weekly Magazine:

Reviews for The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

[emma_manolis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this story. It was very well written and an entertaining read. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is simply because the ending was rather rushed and slightly unclear. However, I would recommend it to anyone.