The Sign of the Four The Sign of the Four The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. The story is set in 1888. "The Sign of the Four" has a complex plot involving service in India, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a stolen treasure, and a secret pact among four convicts ("the Four" of the title) and two corrupt prison guards. It presents the detective's drug habit and humanizes him in a way that had
The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes is a short story collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiches written by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, first published in 1954. As an early and rather authoritative example of Sherlockian pastiche—the collaborators being the son and the authorised biographer of Holmes's creator—there is much to interest collectors. Each story in this collection is postscripted with a quote from one of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, making reference to an undocumented Holmes case that inspired it. It was in 1945 that began a collaboration of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's son,