Hugh Ashton has been digging deeper in the deed box that originally belonged to Dr Watson, the friend and colleague of the celebrated detective Sherlock Holmes. He has unearthed three more tales referred to in the original books, but never before released to the public: Colonel Warburton's Madness; the Paradol Chamber; and the Giant Rat of Sumatra.The Case of Colonel Warburton's Madness is one of the few cases recorded by Watson as being one that he introduced to Holmes (The Engineer's Thumb being the other). Taking place in a seemingly innocuous suburban setting, it is nonetheless a tale of dark secrets and hidden evil. Holmes' skill at disguise is never seen to better advantage. Watson himself likewise shines as an investigator of more than average competence.The Mystery of the Paradol Chamber is strangely named, and the mystery itself is a strange one where Holmes' talents are needed to unravel a classic "locked room" murder puzzle. Religion plays a very minor role in most of the cases described by Watson - it is interesting to see here that Holmes claims to have memorised the churches and incumbents of all the Roman Catholic (at least) churches in the English Home Counties.Finally, the definitive story of The Giant Rat of Sumatra has come to light. There are obvious reasons why this story was withheld from the public for so long. Even with the pseudonyms that have been so obviously employed, this story could have shaken the respectable world of English politics to the core if released. The cooperation of the Royal Navy with Holmes in the solving of this bizarre mystery is another aspect that would also have been kept secret, possibly at the behest of Mycroft. Hugh Ashton was born in the UK in 1956, and after graduation from university worked in the technology industry around Cambridge (the first personal computer he used was Sir Clive Sinclair's personal TRS-80) until 1988, when a long-standing interest in the country took him to Japan.There he worked for a Japanese company producing documentation for electronic instruments and high-end professional audio equipment, helped to set up the infrastructure for Japan's first public Internet service provider, worked for major international finance houses, and worked on various writing projects, including interviewing figures in the business and scientific fields, and creating advertorial reports for Japanese corporations to be reprinted in international business magazines.Along the way, he met and married Yoshiko, and also gained certificates in tea ceremony and iaidō (the art of drawing a sword quickly).In 2008, he wrote and self-published his first published novel, Beneath Gray Skies, an alternative history in which the American Civil War was never fought, and the independent Confederacy forms an alliance with the German National Socialist party. This was followed by At the Sharpe End, a techno-financial-thriller set in Japan at the time of the Lehman's crash, and Red Wheels Turning, which re-introduced Brian Finch-Malloy, the hero of Beneath Gray Skies, referred to by one reviewer as "a 1920s James Bond".In 2012, Inknbeans Press of California published his first collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures, Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D., which was swiftly followed by many other volumes of Holmes' adventures, hailed by Sherlockians round the world as being true to the style and the spirit of the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Inknbeans also published Tales of Old Japanese and other books by Ashton, including the Sherlock Ferret series of detective adventures for children. He and Yoshiko returned to the UK in 2016 for family reasons, where they now live in the Midlands cathedral city of Lichfield.In December 2017, Inknbeans Press ceased to be, following the sudden death of the proprietor, chief editor and leading light. Since that time, Ashton has reclaimed the copyright of his work, and has republished it in ebook and paper editions, along with the work of s
