Publisher's Synopsis
It is an autumn night. Outside, the rain lashes the windows with persistent fury and the dank streets are awash. Only a solitary streetlamp pierces the gloom. For hours, Sherlock Holmes has been sitting here, motionless, pondering the intricacies of some arcane markings. And so, the room has become a smoke-enveloped oven, more deadly perhaps than the great Grimpen Mire. So all-pervasive is the tobacco aroma that curls its way round the sitting-room at 221B, we assume Mrs Hudson to have been a long-suffering woman. Apart from the clutter of papers and bric-a-brac on the mantlepiece, the walls and ceiling are stained dark brown and the debris of Holmes' "plugs and dottles" can be tolerated only by the strongest of stomachs. This exhaustive work on the role of tobacco in the 60 Holmes stories contains over 130 Holmes/tobacco quotes for easy reference, plus several new adventures of the great, pipe smoking detective.
