THE BAKER STREET DOZEN

The game's a-foot again during this centenary of the first Sherlock Holmes story, and aficionadoes of the great detective should enjoy pouring over this collection of Sherlockian tales and essays. The stories are the 12 that Conan Doyle himself chose as his favorites--""The Speckled Band,"" ""The Red-Headed League,"" etc.--plus ""The Silver Blaize""; the essays, by leading Sherlockians such as Isaac Asimov, Kelvin I. Jones, and John Bennett Shaw, aim, as Shaw writes in his introduction, ""to treat in speech or in print the character Holmes and his Late Victorian milieu in a proper or scholarly manner."" So if questions such as ""What was that country constable doing at those lonely crossroads at night? How many thousands did Holmes actually pocket?"" intrigue, this book will please.