The Sign of the Four and play adaptations insure this book: The Sign of the Four was also adapted for radio by Bert Coules in 1989 as part of BBC Radio 4's complete audio Sherlock Holmes, with Clive Merrison as Holmes, Michael Williams as Watson, and featuring Brian Blessed as Jonathan Small. 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"
Sherlock Holmes pastiches literature. In January 1928, the short story "My Dear Holmes" was published in "Punch, or the London Charivari". The sub-title of the story was: "His positively last appearance on earth." Written from the point of view of Holmes, it starts out in the usual way, and then ends rather lamely with no mystery presented or solved, but Holmes dead of incautiously (and improbably) sniffing excessively at a bottle of an anesthetic ("A.C.E.") he has asked Watson to bring with them on an errand. Arthur Conan Doyle's son, Adrian Conan Doyle, wrote—in a joint effort with John Dickson Carr—twelve Sherlock Holmes