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
Canon of Sherlock Holmes each other. They are generally considered Sherlock Holmes pastiches. The stories contained in the collection are: "The Case of the Man Who Was Wanted" (c. 1914) This mystery, a completed Sherlock Holmes story, was found in 1942 by a Conan Doyle biographer, Hesketh Pearson, searching through a box of Conan Doyle's papers. It was originally announced that the story would not be published by the Doyle estate, but it was announced it certainly was by Doyle, as the manuscript supposedly appeared in his own handwriting. However, according to Jon L. Lellenberg in "Nova 57 Minor", the manuscript was not in