Sherlock Holmes has been investigating two similar murders. Both victims – an international banker named Van Coon and a journalist named Lukis – were found dead inside their locked apartments after receiving a threat in the form of a mysterious symbol. The race is on to discover the meaning of this cipher. How does all this tie in with Soo Lin Yao, a Chinese pottery expert at the National Antiquities Museum…?

The Blind Banker is loosely based upon The Adventure of the Dancing Men, featuring as it does coded messages that appear to be ordinary graffiti. But unlike the childish pictograms of The Dancing Men, the symbols in this tale (which are accurately reproduced by artist Jay.) look more like the tags used by grown-up graffiti artists. Accordingly, Sherlock seeks the advice of a character who is clearly inspired by Banksy – whom the unwitting John ends up taking the rap for. “They’re giving me an ASBO,” he later complains!

Other influences include the Sherlock Holmes novels The Valley of Fear (a secret society hunting down its victims) and The Sign of the Four (a locked room accessible only by climbing), both of which exhibit themselves in this instalment.

As in the first issue of this story, Sherlock is violently attacked without John ever realising it – this time inside the flat of the missing Chinese pottery expert Soo Lin Yao. The difference on this occasion is that the detective is taken by surprise, and he comes very close to not surviving the encounter.

I, too, was taken by surprise, owing to the passage of time and the failing of my memory since the original 2010 television transmission of this adventure!

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Richard McGinlay