The Valley of Fear

Lore & Background

The second part explains the past of the man known as Douglas. His real name was Birdy Edwards, a Pinkerton detective from Chicago who went undercover in Vermissa Valley, the Valley of Fear of the title, as "Jack McMurdo". There he infiltrated a corrupt coal miners' lodge that was a cover for the Scowrers, a murderous gang of protection racketeers. After he brought the gang to justice the surviving criminals tried to kill him, and he changed his name and fled to England. Professor Moriarty stands behind the pursuit: the novel opens with a cipher warning from Fred Porlock, a double agent inside Moriarty's organisation, and Holmes believes Moriarty was responsible for the end of Douglas.

Reader's Guide

Holmes deciphers Porlock's message as a warning of a plot against a man named Douglas of Birlstone House, and minutes later Inspector MacDonald arrives to say that Douglas was murdered the night before. At the moated house Cecil Barker, who found the body, speaks of a secret society that pursued his friend. A bicycle is traced to an American who has disappeared. Holmes has the police announce a search of the moat, and that night Barker is seen fishing the missing man's clothes out of it. Douglas then appears alive: his enemy Ted Baldwin had been shot in the face in a struggle over a shotgun, and Douglas, with Barker's help, dressed the body in his own clothes and hid in a priest hole. Holmes urges him to leave England, but he is later lost overboard on the voyage to Africa.

Did You Know?

• Much of the story takes place in an American flashback setting rather than Victorian London.
• The protagonist changes his name and identity multiple times throughout the narrative.