Sherlock has retired. Now living in Sussex, he’s enjoying a pleasant walk along the beach when he runs into a friend, Harold Stackhurst, headmaster at The Gables. The two acquaintances have just started chatting when they’re interrupted by one of the teachers at Stackhurst’s school, Fitzroy McPherson. The man appears to be in a great deal of pain and only manages to mutter something about a lion’s mane before collapsing, dead. He has strange wounds on his back. Then comes another of the teachers, Ian Murdoch, who claims to have no idea what happened, having just arrived himself. But there is no one else close by. "The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane" is part of "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After his studies, he worked as a ship’s surgeon on various boats. During the Second Boer War, he was an army doctor in South Africa. When he came back to the United Kingdom, he opened his own practice and started writing crime books. He is best known for his thrilling stories about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He published four novels and more than 50 short-stories starring the detective and Dr Watson, and they play an important role in the history of crime fiction. Other than the Sherlock Holmes series, Doyle wrote around thirty more books, in genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, historical novels, but also poetry, plays, and non-fiction.