Mary Sutherland, a working-class girl who possesses a generous income as a result of a bequest from a relative, comes to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson for help after her fiancé, Hosmer Angel, disappears on their wedding day.

Angel, Holmes learns, was a quiet and secretive man who always wore a pair of tinted glasses and would not give Sutherland his address, insisting that she leave letters at the local post office instead.

[3] This story was the basis for the third Holmes adventure (released in 1921) in the silent Stoll film series starring Eille Norwood.

In the fourth episode of the 2014 Japanese puppetry television series Sherlock Holmes, Mary Sutherland is a pupil of Beeton School.

[12] The story was adapted in 1990 by Peter Mackie as an episode of the 1989–1998 BBC radio series, starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson, and featuring Susannah Corbett as Mary Sutherland.

Colin Dexter, known for writing the Inspector Morse novels, wrote a short story based on this called "A Case of Mis-Identity", in which Holmes's brother Mycroft is involved in the case's deduction; in this story, Holmes's theory about the 'Hosmer Angel' character is the same, while Mycroft deduces that 'Hosmer Angel' is a fiction created by the mother and daughter to eliminate the step-father, only for Watson to reveal that 'Hosmer Angel' is actually a real person who was attacked and robbed on the way to his wedding, hospitalized, and eventually treated by Watson, who used his own detective skills to verify the man's identity.

[15] The story was adapted as the beginning of the third case in the 2016 Frogwares video game Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter.

Watson is not present when Mary Sutherland arrives and Sherlock is accompanied by Orson Wilde, an American actor training to play him.