Adrian Conan Doyle produced additional Sherlock Holmes stories, some with the assistance of John Dickson Carr.

In the United States, Cosmopolitan magazine obtained it and published it in their August 1948 issue under the uncharacteristic title "The Case of the Man who was Wanted".

Sherlock Holmes expert Vincent Starrett doubted that the story was written by the elder Doyle and suggested that Adrian was the author.

[2] After seeing it attributed to Sir Arthur in the Sunday Dispatch, Whitaker wrote a letter to Denis Conan Doyle stating that he was the true author.

The memoir, which emphasised his paranormal interests, was not what readers wanted, so after their mother's death, Adrian and Denis grudgingly allowed Hesketh Pearson to write Conan Doyle: His Life and Art (Methuen, 1943).

Adrian threatened criminal proceedings against Pearson's "fakeography", wrote an article in protest, and later, a book: The True Conan Doyle (John Murray, 1945).

According to Lycett, "When the BBC commissioned an anniversary talk from Hesketh Pearson, Adrian announced that if it went ahead it would never broadcast another Sherlock Holmes story.