"I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart." Scandal, treachery and crime are rife in Old London Town. A king blackmailed by his mistress, dark dealings in Opium dens, stolen jewels, a missing bride – these are cases so fiendishly complex that only the great Sherlock Holmes would dare to investigate. For he, and he alone, has the extraordinary faculty of perception and almost unhuman energy which could solve them … Conan Doyle's first collection of short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains twelve short stories which were originally published in twelve monthly issues of The Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1892.