Gambler's Fallacy Book

The Man with the Twisted Lip is a short story that deals with the abduction, and presumed murder, of the rich investor, Neville St Clair. The abduction had been observed by Neville St Clair's wife, and although the police had arrested a suspect, the beggar, Hugh Boone, Sherlock Holmes had been retained to uncover all of the events.

This short story is one with many twists and turns, and sees Holmes and Dr Watson, travelling from an opium den in London, down to Kent, and back to London again.

Arguably, the tale of The Man with the Twisted Lip tells the reader more about the character of Dr Watson, than it does of Sherlock Holmes. The detecting prowess of Holmes has already been well established by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle before hand, as had the lengths the detective would go to in support of his client. In the story of The Man with the Twisted Lip we find though, the lengths that Watson would go to for his friends, and not just for Holmes; Watson willingly goes into the dangerous opium den, at the start of the story, to find Isa Whitney.

The CBS television series Elementary has used The Man with the Twisted Lip as a title for one of its episodes, although the plot of the episode bears no similarity with the original story.

In August 1986 though, Granada Television did make an episode, starring Jeremy Brett, which keeps faithfully to the original story. The Granada episode of The Man with the Twisted Lip appears in the third series, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, so is not in the same order as the original canon.