A brutal murder has been committed in an English manor. The drawbridge over the moat was folded up, but no one in the house can reasonably be blamed. The second part of the book takes place in a harsh environment among miners and freemasons in Vermissa Valley, USA. Like the novels A Study in Red and The Sign of the Four, the novel is in two parts, where the first part is about how Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson solve the case in England, and the second part is a background story about the culprits.
The Valley of Fear is a Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, originally published in 1914-1915 as a serial in The Strand Magazine in Great Britain.