'Surely no man would take up my profession if it were not that danger attracts him.' In 'The Casebook', you can read the final twelve stories that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about his brilliant detective. They are perhaps the most unusual and the darkest that he penned. Treachery, mutilation and the terrible consequences of infidelity are just some of the themes explored in these stories, along with atmospheric touches of the gothic, involving a bloodsucking vampire, crypts at midnight and strange bones in a furnace. The collection His Last Bow features some of Sherlock Holmes' most dramatic cases, including the vicious revenge intrigue connected with 'The Red Circle' and the insidious murders in 'The Devil's Foot'. The title story recounts how Sherlock Holmes is brought out of retirement to help the government foil a German plot on the eve of the First World War. These two fascinating sets of stories make a glorious farewell to the greatest detective of them all and his erstwhile companion, Dr Watson. AUTHOR: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a Scottish physician and writer. His works encompass a wide variety of genres, and it was his historical novels that he considered his finest work. However, posterity remembers him only as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Each new generation discovers Holmes afresh, as the current TV and film adaptations demonstrate. Doyle created a character so well known that he exists in the borderline between fiction and reality.