The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes are overshadowed by the event with which they close—the meeting of the great detective and Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime. Their struggle, seemingly to the death, was to leave many readers desolate at the loss of Holmes, but was also to lead to his immortality as a literary figure. However illogical as a detective story, The Final Problem has proved itself an unforgettable tale. The stories that precede it included two narratives from

Holmes himself, on a mutiny at sea and a treasure hunt in a Sussex country house, as well as a meeting with his brilliant brother Mycroft, of whom Holmes says, "If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from any armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859, one of seven children who survived to adulthood. Rejecting his family's strict Catholicism and, cut off from their patronage, he decided to set up his own practice in Southsea in 1882. After the death of his first wife, Louise Hawkins, he went on to marry Jean Leckie in 1907 and they had two sons and a daughter. He died in 1930.