Originally published in 1890, this second Sherlock Holmes novel is both a detective story and an imperial romance. Mary Morstan, a beautiful young woman with whom Dr. Watson falls in love, enlists Holmes to find her vanished father and to solve the mystery of why someone sends her a perfect pearl on the same date each year. What Holmes uncovers is a tale of treachery and human greed, with the action of the tale ranging from the suburban comfort of South London to penal settlements on the Andaman Islands, and from the opium-fueled violence of the Agra Fort during the 1857 Indian Rebellion to the cocaine-induced contemplation of Holmes's own Baker Street.