Description: Filled with rare photos, posters, puzzles, maps, and other visual material, The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes covers all the literature -- as well as the stories behind the stories, offering many fascinating tidbits of information. It's not generally realized, for instance, that Sherlock Holmes did not devote his life to fighting crime. Many of the 56 short stories, while they usually involve mysteries, contain no crime at all, while others include relatively minor offenses. And how many know that "Sherlock Holmes" was not the original name of the great sleuth? (A Study in Scarlet was to center around one "Sherrinford Holmes.") Did you realize that the curved or meerschaum pipe so identified with Holmes is not in the stories? (It was first used by William Gillette, the American actor, who portrayed Holmes on stage and couldn't say his lines with a straight pipe in his mouth.) Why did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- who was knighted not for creating Sherlock Holmes but for defending British conduct during the Boer War -- bring Holmes back from the dead after killing him off in The Final Problem? And many will also be surprised to learn that the definitive television Holmes of our time, Jeremy Brett, had his first role as Dr. Watson!

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