The Valley of Fear
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Brander Matthews
eBook
(Zephyr House, Nov. 5, 2015)
Zephyr House is please to release volume 7 of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, "The Valley of Fear," which includes an introductory essay by the famed literary critic, Brander Matthews.The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915, and illustrated by Arthur I. Keller.At the outset of the novel, Sherlock Holmes receives a mysterious cipher message from a man who writes under the pseudonym Fred Porlock, an agent to Professor Moriarty. Porlock occasionally sends Holmes insider information. Moriarty is blameless in the eyes of the law, but Holmes knows him to be "the controlling brain of the underworld." Together Holmes and Watson decipher Porlock's message which relates that a man named John Douglas, residing at Birlstone, is in danger...