1894 - the year that Sherlock Holmes returned to London, after the Great Hiatus that followed the plunge into the Reichenbach Falls. Doctor Watson, though astounded at his friend's reappearance, nonetheless retained his composure enough to record the adventures that he shared with the famous sleuth in that year. Though he alludes to many of them, he never presented these to his literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Hugh Ashton has come into possession of one of the notebooks where Watson wrote up these cases, and has presented five of them that Watson mentioned in The Golden Pince-Nez: The Red Leech, The Addleton Tragedy, The Ancient British Barrow, The Smith-Mortimer Succession, and The Boulevard Assassin.

In addition, the volume contains the adventure of The Two Coptic Patriarchs, as mentioned in The Retired Colourman. The book has been produced following the style of the Strand magazine, and the cover features a facsimile of the memorandum book of Doctor Watson in which the adventures were first written, including the mark from a glass from which Watson no doubt refreshed himself while engaged in his literary labours.