It is based on a tabletop game-gamebook hybrid of the same name first published in 1981, and features the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The player must then choose a particular location or person from the directory to visit, read the London newspapers for clues or ask one of the young Baker Street Irregulars to investigate.

Selecting an irrelevant location to visit results in a short audio clip of dialogue between Holmes and Watson, and impacts the player's score.

There are several general informants (also portrayed by actors) who can be visited in multiple cases across the Consulting Detective games, including characters from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, namely Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, former criminal Shinwell Johnson, and gossip columnist Langdale Pike.

Holmes and Watson decide to take on the case to find the real culprit, but they face a challenge as all three murders were respectively orchestrated in London, Egypt and at sea.

Holmes and Watson investigate to see whether the crime was due to the general's part in a Veteran Tontine, a book he was writing on a missing diamond, a disgruntled marriage, or something hidden deep in his past.

The magazine recommended the game "with qualifications", calling it "a ground-breaking product with whiz-bang technology that demonstrates the full potential of multimedia", but with "limited play life" due to lack of replayability.

[5] In a retrospective review, Jonathan Sutyak of Allgame gave the Sega CD version a score of 2.5 out of 5 stars praising the actors and the dialogue being clear and well acted, although commenting that there is a large amount of FMV and little gameplay and felt the game does not offer the player enough to do.

[14] In March 2012, a Kickstarter campaign was launched by David Marsh and his company Zojoi to help fund a high resolution and remastered version of the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Adventure Mysteries.