master of detection would no doubt have investigated a number of England's most infamous crimes: the alleged bigamy of King George V, the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907, the suspicious death of President Faure of France after the Dreyfus affair, and four of Great Britain's most notorious murder trials. And so Holmes does in this volume by Donald Thomas. In The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes, accompanied as ever by the faithful Dr. Watson, the Great Detective conducts clandestine investigations into historical cases so delicate they endanger the national security and indeed, without the formidable ratiocinative powers of the eminent Holmes, could topple the monarchy or government.  (less)

before this story began, the world was introduced to a fictional character destined for such immeasurable acclaim that he would overwhelm his creator’s efforts to be done with him. The essence of this character’s appeal was not derring-do, as in the dime novels of Beadle & Adams, but rather in his uncanny ability to unravel a set of data that had stumped lesser men and proceed to a logical and incisive conclusion. He was so coldly rational that he was often compared to a machine, the Analytical Engine of Charles Babbage. His name, of course, was Sherlock Holmes.brbrTo those of us engaged in medical research, however, the remarkable methods of Conan Doyle’s consulting detective were not at all revolutionary — they were merely a popularization of the modus operandi we employed in our quotidian efforts to alleviate human misery. The connection of analytic detection to medicine was unmistakable. Doyle himself was a physician, as were both Joseph Bell, widely considered the model for the character, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the man for whom the detective was named. And while Sherlock Holmes may have trod the back alleys of Victorian London to ply his trade, the scenes of our crimes were no less exotic and often even more grisly.brbrTo make sense of nature’s felonies against the human body, you see, physicians are compelled to study not only the living, but also those who have succumbed. Our clues lie in internal organs, blood vessels, skin, hair, and fluids, and we need as much access to these as Holmes needed to footprints, handwriting, or hotel records. It is only through painstaking examination@!LÌÌÌÌÍÿ¾Û€  (less)