Dr. John Watson, recently returned from military service in Afghanistan, doesn't know what to make of his new roommate. Sherlock Holmes has profound knowledge of soil composition and sensational literature but knows next to nothing about contemporary politics and is ignorant of the fact that the Earth goes around the sun. Holmes hosts strange visitors at odd hours . . . and claims to be the world's only consulting detective. Soon Holmes and Watson are wrapped up in a mystery involving poison, a woman's wedding ring, and a word scrawled in blood. Will Holmes's science of deduction be enough to unravel the scarlet thread of murder? Taken from the 1887 copyright edition, this is an unabridged version of Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel.