DR. MORTIMER AND THE ALDGATE MYSTERY

Through a chronological accident worthy of Dr. Watson, this inaugural adventure of Dr. James Mortimer, the physician whose main claim to fame before this year was leaving a cane behind in Sherlock Holmes’s rooms in The Hound of the Baskervilles, has already been preceded by his second (Dr. Mortimer and the Barking Man Mystery, p. 299). Here, the good doctor attends young Lavinia Nancarrow only to discover that her influenza is less threatening than the sinister guardian who, in the best tradition of “The Copper Beeches” and “The Greek Interpreter,” is keeping her imprisoned in an Aldgate house.