His Last Bow

His Last Bow is Arthur Conan Doyle’s collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, including cases of deception, threatened lives, and state secrets. The Dying Detective and The Bruce-Partington Plans give very different uses to concealment and inference, while the title story changes the usual setting to espionage before the First World War. Most of the collection retains Watson’s familiar perspective on the detective’s methods and character. The stories draw their force from the gradual recognition of relationships between details that initially seem unrelated.