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New Sherlock Holmes novel by Anthony Horowitz out in November

11.04.11

The answer, Watson, is elementary. The reason Sherlock Holmes' latest adventure, The House of Silk, is only being published 81 years after the death of his creator Arthur Conan Doyle , and 106 years after his final story about the tenant of 221B Baker Street, is that the story was simply too shocking to reveal until now.

The news in January that Anthony Horowitz – better known as a children's author – had been commissioned to write a new Sherlock Holmes novel, was itself a literary sensation. The book, his publishers promise, is "stunning", and the title has just been revealed for the first time.

The book is set in 1890, but as written by Watson in a retirement home, a year after the death of Holmes. The story opens with a train robbery in Boston, and moves to the innocuous setting of Wimbledon – but, Holmes says, the tale was too monstrous, too appalling to reveal until now. "It is no exaggeration to say it could tear apart the very fabric of society", he writes in the prologue.