Showing results by publisher "Saga Egmont" in Traditional Detectives

Sherlock Holmes is still a student when he receives his very first case. While still in college, he is invited to the house of his good friend, Victor Trevor. There he meets Trevor’s father, who challenges Holmes to analyze him, so that he can test the young detective’s investigative skills. Holmes touches a nerve after mentioning a person with the initials "J.A.". After the shock passes, Trevor’s father tries to hide how terrified he is, but Holmes can still catch the anxiety in his eyes.

One night during his regular rambles, Mérimée stumbles upon a mysterious woman who invites him home to her place. They enter a big, dark but luxuriously furnished room and they spend the whole night having dinner and talking. However things take a turn to the strange when the eery lady starts talking about death and tombs. Mérimée realises that his companion is not an ordinary woman and that he is in danger. Will he get himself out of there alive or will Xélucha drag him with her to the underworld? B. J.

Aristide Valentin holds a dinner party in his secret garden, which only has one main entrance. Many people are invited. Julius K. Brayne, one of Valentin’s rivals, is of the party as well. Everything goes as planned until one group of guests finds a beheaded corpse and the dinner turns into an investigation. Many questions begin to arise: How could someone be killed in a closed back garden without anyone noticing? Who is the victim? Who is the murderer? Where is the head? Find out the answers in "The Secret Garden". B. J.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are discussing the lack of interesting new cases when a man bursts into the room. The panicked young man is McFarlane and he believes that he will be arrested for the murder of 52-year-old Jonas Oldacre. Oldacre’s burnt remains are found behind McFarlane house, the day after the builder Oldacre came to the lawyer McFarlane to draw up his will and made him his sole beneficiary. McFarlane is arrested as the main suspect. Holmes believes that the young man is not guilty and does his best to prove it.

Lieutenant-General von Rabbek is a local aristocrat, who invites the officers of the Reserve Artillery Brigade to a cup of tea with brandy. Of all the guests, Ryabovitch is the most unpleasant one. While doing his best to avoid talking to people, Ryabovitch enters a dark room, where he an unknown woman surprises him by kissing him, then running away. The unexpected kiss awakes Ryabovitch's curiosity and passion, and the man spends the rest of the evening searching for the mysterious woman.

Hilton Cubitt visits Sherlock Holmes to show him a sheet of paper with a weird sequence of drawn figures. When these odd messages began to arrive at Cubitt’s house, fear and panic overwhelmed his wife Elsie. She is afraid her past is catching up with her, but she refuses to reveal anything about it. Holmes is tasked with decipher the messages and find out who is sending them.

The narrator is under the spell of Ellis - a female vampire - who takes him on series of flights to different places, such as Paris, St. Petersburg and the Isle of Wight. At these places, he becomes a witness to various incidents and becomes involves in different situations. Why was the narrator cursed by Ellis? Why did she take him to those places and what did she wanted to show him? What will the narrator learn from their journey? How will the story end? Find all the answers in Turgenev’s story "Phantoms" from 1863. B. J.

Helen Stoner goes to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. She is afraid that her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, may be trying to kill her. Helen’s sister died mysteriously two years earlier, right before her own wedding. Her last words, which Helen never managed to decipher were "The speckled band". Dr. Roylott’s best friends are a band of gypsies. He also owns two dangerous animals, a cheetah and a baboon, as pets. He simply scares people, and everyone avoids him.

While hosting a party, a banker makes a bet with one of his guests, who is a lawyer. The topic of the bet is capital punishment and whether it is worse or better than a life sentence. The banker sees the capital punishment as more humane than life imprisonment, whilst the young lawyer completely disagrees. The bet is as follows: if the lawyer spends fifteen years in complete isolation, the banker will give him two million rubles. As the years pass, the banker realizes that he will go bankrupt if he loses the bet.

"The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" is Sir Conan Doyle’s second collection about the great detective. In this collection we meet the same two protagonists, namely Holmes and Watson, but the cases and mysteries that must be solved are completely new. The disappearance of a champion horse, a dead coachman and stolen naval treaty are only a small portion of all the mysteries the two men will have to deal with.

One day a poor fisherman finds a large and heavy chest. Caliph Harun al-Rashid buys the chest, thinking that it encloses a treasure. Instead, he finds out that it contains a woman’s corpse sliced into pieces. Following this discovery, the caliph orders his vizier Ja’far, to find the murderer within three years, otherwise he will be executed. Unfortunately, due to the lack of evidence, the vizier is not able to make a proper investigation and the fatal day looms closer.

Rachel Innes is a rich lady who has been taking care of her niece and nephew since their father died. The three of them decide to rent a house in the country and although everything seems to be alright in the beginning, strange events soon begin to occur. Her niece disappears then reappears a few days later. There is a murder they are involved in. They hear strange noises. Things fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. Will Rachel solve the mysteries and how will their summer end? Find out in "The Circular Staircase". B. J.

Forty-two years old Marlow is drinking with four other Englishmen. They have known each other since the beginning of their working lives. Some of them have other jobs now, but they still gather to recall the good old days. Marlow tells his friends a story of his early life, when he travelled to the East as a young man in search of adventure. He shares his experience and impressions of the different cultures he came across with the four men.

A young woman named Mary Sutherland is engaged and about to marry Hosmer Angel, when he unexpectedly disappears. In her despair and anxiety, Mary decides to ask Sherlock Holmes for his help. This seems to be a simple case for the great detective. After a short exchange of letters with Mary’s stepfather, Mr. Windibank, Sherlock finds out what the truth is.

B.J. Harrison reads "The Purloined Letter" by Edgar Allan Poe, which is a story of an unusual mystery that needs to be solved. A sensitive letter has been stolen from the queen's boudoir, and the famous amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin has been called to the rescue. The guilty one is the lover himself, Minister D-. What ensues is a match between the detective and the thief, two equally brilliant minds.

From the books that inspired the new Netflix series "Lupin" with Omar Sy. Arsene Lupin is suddenly and suspiciously willing to share some secrets with Inspector Ganimard which will help the police unveil a murder. But is Lupin helping out of the goodness of his heart or does a large jewel connected to the deceased have anything to do with it? The fifth story in Maurice Leblanc’s collection "The Confessions of Arsene Lupin" about gentleman thief and criminal mastermind, Arsene Lupin.

A small group of friends decide to attend a seance at a local art studio. While some of them are very sceptical about the whole thing, others believe in the medium’s abilities. The group starts a discussion about a new painting of a mythical creature, when a Frenchman joins and claims that he sees a unicorn in it. Shortly after the seance begins, a strange light fills the room and the medium starts speaking in a different voice. The voice is that of a person no longer within the living.

Inspector Lestrade is investigating a series of break-ins in London which have one thing in common: shattered Napoleon busts. After many unsuccessful attempts to solve the case, Lestrade comes to a dead end and is forced to ask Sherlock Holmes for help. The next day another bust has been destroyed, but there has also been a murder. Holmes wants to solve the case as quickly as possible to prevent another crime. He finds out that all the Napoleon busts come from the same mould.

Halpin Frayser awakes from a dreamless sleep and the only thing in his mind was the words "Catherine Larue". Frayer feels a shiver down his spine because this was not the first strange thing he had experienced that day. Earlier, he was hunting in the forest but he could feel that something was not quite right. The picture of a haunted forest dripping with blood had come up in his mind. He had seen himself writing a poem with blood. The corpse of his mother had been in front of him.

Latimer is convinced that he has a special power. According to him, he can see into the future and he can also read people's mind. Actually everybody’s but one; his brother’s wife Bertha's mind remains closed to him. Although he marries her after his brother’s death, he still cannot manage to read her thoughts. What he realizes however is that Bertha is manipulative and her heart is not pure.