The Tin Box of Cox & Co.
The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes
The box has been opened. Thirteen of the untold cases — the stories Watson mentioned but never told — written in full, in the authentic voice of the Canon.
"Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid." — "The Problem of Thor Bridge"
For over a century, that sentence has been the most tantalising promise in all of detective fiction. Watson told us the box existed — crammed with records of cases "to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine" — and then he left it in the dark. The lost cases. The names dropped in passing and never explained.
- The Giant Rat of Sumatra
- Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife
- The madness of Isadora Persano
- The Grosvenor Square furniture van
- A politician, a lighthouse, and a trained cormorant
This is the book that opens the box.
The Tin Box of Cox & Co. gathers thirteen of the untold cases, written as full investigations in the authentic voice of the Canon. Each case is followed by a "Beyond the Story" essay in which James Biss traces the historical truth behind the fiction: the real science, the real Victorian oddities, the stubborn facts of history hiding inside the impossible.
These are the strangest, darkest, and most daring cases Holmes and Watson ever faced — adventures moving through science and superstition, theatre and politics, faith and fraud, the machinery of Empire and the quieter machinery of reputation. Here Holmes is permitted not only to triumph, but to remember his mistakes and to confront mysteries he cannot entirely mend. Women whom the original chronicles dismissed as victims or eccentrics become the authors of their own designs. Historical figures — H. G. Wells, Harry Houdini — walk into Baker Street not as famous visitors, but as men whose ideas challenge Holmes himself.
From the horrors of the club-footed Ricoletti to the matchbox of Isadora Persano, from a vanishing furniture van to the nightmare of Spring-Heeled Jack, these thirteen cases span the full range of the Holmesian world: mischievous, theatrical, unexpectedly tender — and, in the closing story, darker than anything the Canon ever dared.
James Biss brings to the project the eye of a theatrical creator, mentalist, and lifelong student of astonishment, together with the scholarship behind the acclaimed Finding Sherlock Holmes series — the internationally recognised restoration work of Finding A Study in Scarlet, Finding The Sign of the Four, The Secret Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Killing Sherlock Holmes. This time the documents led him to the door — and the author opened it.
For collectors, Sherlockians, and anyone who has ever wondered what was inside the box — a lavish anthology in the exact style of the classic Strand format.
Advance Praise
"Considerably more than competent pastiche — intelligent, atmospheric and often genuinely unsettling."
"Makes a persuasive case for its existence… the best Holmes stories are ultimately about something more troubling than crime."