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      HARPER

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      First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

      FIRST EDITION

      © Tom Cutler 2015

      Illustrations © Bart Aalbers

      Match diagrams © Alexei Penfold

      Cover layout design Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

      Tom Cutler asserts the moral right to be

      identified as the author of this work

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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      Source ISBN: 9780008157210

      Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008157203

      Version: 2016-02-25

Dedication

      This book is dedicated to Dr John H. Watson,

      ‘the one fixed point in a changing age’.

Epigraph

      ‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’

      Sherlock Holmes, in The Sign of the Four (1890),

      by Arthur Conan Doyle

About the Author

      Tom Cutler began his career with numerous false starts, as a teacher, set designer, speechwriter, printer, wine waiter, City drone and radio reporter, before settling down in book and magazine publishing. After building up extensive scar tissue he finally threw caution to the wind and launched himself as a humorous writer upon a reading public that had done nothing to hurt him.

      Tom’s books cover a variety of subjects, including language, sex and music. Among his several international bestsellers are, A Gentleman’s Bedside Book and the Amazon number-one blockbuster, 211 Things A Bright Boy Can Do. His work has been translated into more languages than you can shake a stick at. Tom has written for the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Huffington Post and BBC radio, and he has a regular column in The Chap magazine.

      He is a practising magician and member of the Magic Circle, as well as a detective story fan and longstanding Sherlock Holmes aficionado. A lifetime’s experience as a very devious bugger has helped him in the writing of this book.

      Tom lives at the seaside, where he enjoys kicking pebbles.