Sherlock Holmes: The Secret Notebooks

Book excerpt: In Sherlock Holmes London, reputations are fragile and scandal can be ruinous. In order to protect the names of the good (and not-so-good), Dr Watson comes to the decision that his accounts of some of his friend’s most brilliant cases must never see the light of day. And so he conceals the manuscripts in an old dispatch box, deep in the vaults of a Charing Cross bank... Now, outlasting the memories of those they could have harmed, these mysteries finally come to light. An aluminium crutch betrays the criminal who relies upon it for support . . . An Italian Cardinal lies dead in a muddy yard in Spitalfields . . . What do a pair of suspiciously successful gamblers have in common with the Transylvanian mind-reader, Count Rakoczi? And can Holmes and Watson outwit the jewel thief who has the nerve to steal from the King of Scandinavia? JUNE THOMSON, a former teacher, has published over thirty novels, twenty of which feature her series detective Inspector Jack Finch and his sergeant, Tom Boyce. She has also written six pastiche collections of Sherlock Holmes short stories. Her books have been translated into many languages. June Thomson lives in St Albans, Hertfordshire.