This image is the cover for the book Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch

Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch

A dozen marvelous tales of deduction, featuring history’s most famous detective, by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Edward D. Hoch.

In a heavily mortgaged country house, an heiress’s sinister guardian attempts to trap her in a bedroom with a rare Indian swamp adder—a murder averted only by the timely intervention of Sherlock Holmes. Five months after the events of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Holmes and Watson are called back to Stoke Moran by a frightened traveler who claims that the viper has gotten loose again. Holmes is unsure which poses a greater danger: the rumored snake, or the possibility that the nomad is telling lies.

In these dozen tales, short story master Edward D. Hoch resurrects the most brilliant mind in the history of detective fiction. In the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes tangles with circus tigers, Druidic curses, and a pair of Christmas killings. Here is the finest detective of the Victorian age—recreated by one of the greatest mystery writers of the twentieth century.

Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch (1930–2008) was a master of the mystery short story. Born in Rochester, New York, he sold his first story, “The Village of the Dead,” to Famous Detective Stories, then one of the last remaining old-time pulps. The tale introduced Simon Ark, a two-thousand-year-old Coptic priest who became one of Hoch’s many series characters. Others included small-town doctor Sam Hawthorne, police detective Captain Leopold, and Revolutionary War secret agent Alexander Swift. By rotating through his stable of characters, most of whom aged with time, Hoch was able to achieve extreme productivity, selling stories to Argosy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which published a story of his in every issue from 1973 until his death.

Open Road Integrated Media