About The Man with the Twisted Lip

Beggar Hugh Boone plies his trade before being accused of murder. This illustration by Sidney Paget originally appeared in The Strand Magazine where ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ was first published.

The Man with the Twisted Lip starts as a missing person investigation but ends up as an opium infused murder hunt.

Sherlock Holmes is employed by Mrs St Clair to find her husband Neville, a respectable gentleman who disappeared moments after being spotted in the window of a seedy back street opium den.

The prime suspect is deformed beggar Hugh Boone, but is this charming vagrant really capable of murder?

Holmes resolves to find out what Boone really had to do with Neville St Clair’s sudden departure, and makes a series of startling discoveries.

“Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient.”
– Dr Watson, in The Man with the Twisted Lip