Book excerpt: Violet Smith, a young music teacher, reached out to Holmes. She was worried because she noticed someone stalking her on her everyday bicycle ride to the train. Holmes took up the case and found out that Violet’s life had changed drastically a few months ago when two friends of her distant uncle arrived in Surrey. Could this event have something to do with Violet’s stalker? Is there some connection between the sudden interest that both of them had in Violet and the deteriorating health of her uncle? "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" is a part of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After his studies, he worked as a ship’s surgeon on various boats. During the Second Boer War, he was an army doctor in South Africa. When he came back to the United Kingdom, he opened his own practice and started writing crime books. He is best known for his thrilling stories about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He published four novels and more than 50 short-stories starring the detective and Dr Watson, and they play an important role in the history of crime fiction. Other than the Sherlock Holmes series, Doyle wrote around thirty more books, in genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, historical novels, but also poetry, plays, and non-fiction.