Watson's Last Case

Ian Charnock's first novel, The Elementary Cases of Sherlock Holmes, explored some of the detective's early cases from the viewpoint of Stamford, a dresser at Barts hospital and friend of Dr. Watson. In this volume Stamford continues his unconventional take on the legend as he is in the process of compiling some of Watson's stories for posthumous publication. Delving into Watson's past, he describes his escapades before, during and after the Great War. In Watson's Last Case under the instruction of the formidable Mycroft Holmes, Watson is dispatched to Russia - with the fate of the Empire and the outcome of the war resting on his shoulders. In a tumultuous epoch, he is at the forefront of a global emergency - told that the British government must be as 'ruthless as its rivals', or else 'sink' into oblivion.

From the action-packed thrills of Watson's youth to the beginnings of Holmes's scholarly life, the Scholar's Appendix changes direction with a speculative insight into Holmes's past. From a young man destined to join the Church to a theologian at Oxford University, this insight into his early years shines a light upon the origins of his incredible powers of observation and the science of deduction, for which he would become so legendary.

Charnock provides an absorbing insight into uncharted territory of the Sherlock Holmes universe, in what is said to be amongst the very best of Sherlockian pastiches ever written.