The Sign of Four

2020 Reprint of the 1890 Edition. The Sign of Four is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle would eventually write four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. The story is set in 1888. The novel 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 not been done in the preceding novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887). It also introduces Doctor Watson‘s future wife, Mary Morstan. It is an entangled story of greed and revenge in which Holmes and Watson accompany a beautiful young woman on a mission that leads to a horrific, one-legged man in the dark heart of London. A thrilling early introduction to Holmes and his methods.