Book Review: The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is the second Sherlock Holmes book after "A Study in Scarlet". This is the story in which Dr Watson meets his future wife Ms. Mary Morstan.

Mary's father was a colonel in the British army and was posted at Andaman and Nicobar Islands. When he returned to London he wrote to her to meet him in a hotel. But Captain Arthur Morstan went missing the day he was supposed to meet his daughter. Then Mary replied to an anonymous newspaper ad asking for her whereabouts and started receiving a pearl every year. The last one she received was the 6th year since she her father went missing and it came with a letter asking her to meet one Mr Thadius Sholto. It was then that Mary contacts Mr Sherlock Holmes to accompany her to the meeting.

Captain Morstan and his colleague Major John Sholto were told about the secret of a hidden treasure by a captive in the Andaman Islands named John Small in return for their help in arranging for a boat in which Small and his 3 Sikh friends will escape from Andaman Islands prison. But Major Sholto double-crossed everyone and stole the treasure for himself. He went back to London and lived a royal life.

Small with the help of a native islander named Tonga goes to London to take his revenge on both Sholto and Captain Morstan and to get the treasure back. Sherlock Holmes with his ingenious detection abilities, tracks Small down as he and Tonga try to escape on a boat.

The stories of Sherlock Holmes have been written in such an appealing fashion that even after so many years they still capture the imagination of the reader and are unputdownable.

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