Complete Brigadier Gerard, Canongate Classics

These charming adventures of the 19th century French brigadier by the creator of Sherlock Holms are “unjustly forgotten tales by a great master” (Michael Chabon).

Though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his immortal character Sherlock Holmes,
his tales of comic adventure featuring Brigadier Etienne Gerard, a French cavalry officer in the tine of the Napoleonic Wars, were equally beloved in their day. An old man who has retired in Paris, Gerard now recounts his escapades of younger days. In Napoleon’s service, he fights battles, breaks hearts, and confounds the English all across Europe. This volume collects all of Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard stories, originally published in The Strand Magazine between 1894 and 1903.

In The Complete Brigadier Gerard Stories “you will find adventure, action, romance, love and self-sacrifice, hair's-breadth escape and reckless courage, gallantry, panache and a droll, backhand humor that rivals that of P.G. Wodehouse. You will also find yourself, even more than with the celebrated stories of Holmes and Watson, in the hands of an indisputable artist. For more than any other adventure stories I know, these stories have a power to move the reader… unjustly forgotten tales by a great master" (Michael Chabon for NPR's You Must Read This).

"The Brigadier Gerard stories display all the narrative gusto of Doyle's more famous Sherlock Holmes, together with an irresistible warmth and humor."—Philip Pullman