It is the yardstick of Sherlock Holmes scholarship that It is never finished: one work inspires another and it becomes increasingly interesting and profound. Martin Dakin has ferreted out more facts and gone a long way to explaining the still unexplained in the Sacred Canon. Who for instance was the mysterious power behind the sinister Joseph in The Naval Treaty? What was the secret of Holmes’s visit to the ‘worst man in London’? And what was he doing during his three years’ absence from England? These are typical problems that Martin Dakin unravels or at least puts us on the path to solving. He has been an active member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London for twenty years, and his scrutiny of the records of Dr Watson is in the true tradition of Holmesian erudition. He delves most illuminatingly into relatively minor matters such as the dates of certain important adventures like that of The Copper Beeches with the same zest as he hits on startling new theories about the authorship of the Casebook and the date of Holmes’s Return.

D.Martin Dakin