"To Sherlock Holmes she is always ’the woman.’" So begins "A Scandal in Bohemia," the first story in the collection. Irene Adler is "the" woman because she is the only person ever to have outwitted Holmes. The King of Bohemia fears that he will be blackmailed by Adler, his former lover, who has kept some compromising love letters and a photograph. However, she manages to turn the tables on the detective, retaining the photograph to ensure her own safety. Other highlights in the collection are the eerie "The Red-Headed League," where a red-headed man is offered employment (copying entries from Encyclopaedia Britannica) by the League as a ruse to keep him occupied while criminals dig a tunnel from the cellar of his premises to a bank. In "The Man with the Twisted Lip," Holmes’s help is enlisted to solve the mystery of the disappearance of Mr. Neville St. Clair. His wife has seen him at the window of an opium den in a rougher part of town, but the police are unable to find anyone but a beggar. A number of enigmas follow before Holmes is able to reach a conclusion.

This hardback book is in great condition.