Adventures from Watson's Third Box

By Hugh Ashton

Doctor John Watson tantalisingly informed us, in The Problem of Thor Bridge, that a box full of unpublished adventures of Sherlock Holmes had been left in the vaults of Cox & Co. of Charing Cross. However, what Watson neglected to tell us was that more than one such box existed, containing accounts of the great detective which had hitherto remained unknown, save for cryptic hints dropped by Watson in the published stories.

Hugh Ashton, recognised to be one of the leading writers of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, edited Watson's manuscripts from the first box and prepared them for publication. This formed the "Deed Box" series of adventures, with the second box forming "Dispatch-Box" series. After these two boxes originally belonging to Doctor Watson had been examined and the stories therein edited by Ashton, a third box was discovered, containing a pipe, a Persian slipper, and a battered Gladstone bag. The bag in its turn contained many notebooks. These notebooks held accounts, in Watson's almost illegible doctor's handwriting, of more cases of the most famous of all sleuths, most of which have now been edited and published in volumes of the MX Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

Fourteen of these adventures are brought together here in one volume for the first time.

The book also includes a foreword by eminent Sherlockian and editor of the MX Volumes, David Marcum.

The stories are traditional in style and plotting, remaining faithful to the Canonical originals, but add depth to the characters of Holmes, Watson, and those around them, while taking nothing away from the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: j-views Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781912605811

Hugh Ashton

Hugh Ashton was born in the UK in 1956, and after graduation from university worked in the technology industry around Cambridge (the first personal computer he used was Sir Clive Sinclair’s personal TRS-80) until 1988, when a long-standing interest in the country took him to Japan.There he worked for a Japanese company producing documentation for electronic instruments and high-end professional audio equipment, helped to set up the infrastructure for Japan’s first public Internet service provider, worked for major international finance houses, and worked on various writing projects, including interviewing figures in the business and scientific fields, and creating advertorial reports for Japanese corporations to be reprinted in international business magazines.Along the way, he met and married Yoshiko, and also gained certificates in tea ceremony and iaidō (the art of drawing a sword quickly).In 2008, he wrote and self-published his first published novel, Beneath Gray Skies, an alternative history in which the American Civil War was never fought, and the independent Confederacy forms an alliance with the German National Socialist party. This was followed by At the Sharpe End, a techno-financial-thriller set in Japan at the time of the Lehman’s crash, and Red Wheels Turning, which re-introduced Brian Finch-Malloy, the hero of Beneath Gray Skies, referred to by one reviewer as “a 1920s James Bond”.In 2012, Inknbeans Press of California published his first collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures, Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D., which was swiftly followed by many other volumes of Holmes’ adventures, hailed by Sherlockians round the world as being true to the style and the spirit of the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Inknbeans also published Tales of Old Japanese and other books by Ashton, including the Sherlock Ferret series of detective adventures for children. He and Yoshiko returned to the UK in 2016 for family reasons, where they now live in the Midlands cathedral city of Lichfield.In December 2017, Inknbeans Press ceased to be, following the sudden death of the proprietor, chief editor and leading light. Since that time, Ashton has reclaimed the copyright of his work, and has republished it in ebook and paper editions, along with the work of several other former Inknbeans authors.He continues to write Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as various other fiction and non-fiction projects, including documentation for forensic software, and editing and layout work on a freelance basis, in between studying for an MSc in forensic psychological studies with the Open University.