Author:Arthur Conan Doyle
Out of his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street stalks a figure to cause the criminal classes to quake in their boots and rush from their dens of inequity … The twelve mysteries gathered in this first collection of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s adventures reveal the brilliant consulting detective at the height of his powers. Problems involving a man with a twisted lip, a fabulous blue carbuncle and five orange pips tax Sherlock Holmes’ intellect alongside some of his most famous cases, including A Scandal in Bohemia and The Red-Headed League.
These are stories in the easiest and most pleasurable sense of the word. MacLaverty's work is in a line from Chekhov, via Frank O'Connor
—— Anne Enright , GuardianI have not read anything as good for a long time
—— Literary ReviewEleven exquisite examples of the genre... MacLaverty writes with consumamte skill... This is a book to cherish and one to read and re-read with pleasure in the skilful craft of its composition
—— Irish IndependentMacLaverty is an exhilarating, tender, humorous wirter... who can set a scene and create a character with Chekhovian delicacy and economy... He reminds us that although life is a dangerous, painful business, we should never despair
—— Sunday TelegraphThis stupendous new book - crucial, shattering sentences - that express, modestly, monumentally the achievement of this extraordinary writer. He is in behind your eyes before you feel his thinking knife ...Matters of Life and Death is a great book. The explicit presiding literary presence is Chekhov. Not reached nor striven for, innate, rather
—— Candia McWilliams , Scottish Review of BooksThis most enticing of writers is also one of the most penetrating
—— Rosemary Goring , HeraldHis insights into the female mind are unique
—— Jackie McGlone , Scotland on SundayA masterly control of pace and structure, pitch-perfect capturing of voice, characterisation that has spot on credibility, human pleasure in life's satisfactions shadowed by awareness of the ways in which they can be jeopardised
—— Peter Kemp , Sunday TimesMacLaverty has never written more powerfully or with greater authorial grip
—— Tom Adair , ScotsmanThis is a fine collection of short stories, sometimes brutal and shocking, but written with a sort of underground tenderness
—— The TimesMacLaverty's stories don't lack drama, but their effect is subtle and stealthy: they creep up on you
—— Ludovic Hunter-Tilney , Financial TimesA master at work...richly textured, filled with vividly humorous detail
—— Lee Langley , Daily MailConfirms MacLaverty's status as an impressive heir of Chekhov and James Joyce
—— Peter Kemp , Sunday Times