This comprehensive and revealing book explores the fictional life of Sherlock Holmes and that of his real life creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle's adventures featuring the genius Sherlock Holmes heralded the rise of the detective novel. Along with his faithful sidekick, Dr Watson, Holmes solved a series of complex and intriguing fictional crimes and battled with his nemesis, the evil Moriarty, to the death and beyond.

The World of Sherlock Holmes examines the stories and exposes the myths and reality of the era in which Conan Doyle's mysteries were published, which saw the rise of Scotland Yard as a legendary organisation for criminal detection and huge advances in forensic medicine, the science of deduction and criminal analysis. Sherlock Holmes' popularity has never waned, and his silhouette with the deerstalker hat and pipe are recognisable over the world. To many, he is an eccentric, intellectual detective; but he had a far darker, more enigmatic side to his character - complex, solitary and prone to narcotic addition.

There have been countless cinema, television and stage adaptations of the stories, most recently the ambitious modern interpretation with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, in which Sherlock Holmes uses digital technologies to help him solve the crime. The original BBC series has been distributed worldwide. In 2012, Lucy Liu also caused a stir by taking on the role of Watson opposite Johnny Lee Miller in another modern re-working, in the CBS series Elementary.