Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978. dj. Hardcover first edition - Estleman's third book, but his first novel in the Sherlock Holmes series. "The year is 1890. A ship is discovered adrift off the English coast, its crew missing, its murdered captain lashed to the wheel, and its only passanger is a sinister black dog. This impenetrable mystery is clearly a case for the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, but for the first time in his illustrious career the great detective is baffled. Clearly the crew have been murdered and dumped overboard, but what can account for the captain's expression of imponderable terror and his acute loss of blood, or the ship's strange cargo -- fifty boxes of earth?" Review copy with publisher's slip laid in. 214 pp. ISBN: 0-385140517.