The Sign of Four (The ^AWorld's Classics). This item is unavailable.The Sign of Four (The ^AWorld's Classics)

Miss Mary Marstan receives through the post once a year a large pearl without any clue as to the sender. When her mysterious correspondent requests a meeting, Holmes and Watson start out on a case. A terrible death and vanishing treasure lead to an epic pursuit through the dawn streets and later along the River Thames. The cast of characters include the unfortunate Sholto twins, the mongrel Toby, and the wooden-legged man, as the fire and blood of Mutiny-torn India throw gigantic, distorted silhouettes across late Victorian London.

In this erudite and provocative edition, Shafquat Towheed offers fans of both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle an intricate account of the intertextual histories at the heart of The Sign of Four. Arguing for the inextricability of its colonial plots with its work as detective fiction, Towheed builds a persuasive case for The Sign of Four as Mutiny fiction, positioning it as pivotal to the imperial career of 'British' fiction per se. Readers of this edition will be gripped by the colonial pathways Towheed reveals, the politics of citation he uncovers, and the entanglement of home and empire he tracks in the making of the novel. This is postcolonial interpretation at its very best. --Antoinette Burton

Perhaps the greatest of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries is this: that when we talk of him we invariably fall into the fancy of his existence. --T. S. Eliot