Athelney Jones was a police inspector who worked for Scotland Yard. He is a main character in The Sign of the Four, where he is tasked with investigating the murder of Bartholomew Sholto.
The Sign of the Four[]
Jones heads the official investigation into Bartholomew Sholto's death. He is portrayed as somewhat pompous and buffoonish, and completely incompetent. Jones makes absolutely no progress on the case, and ignores most of Sherlock Holmes's advice, instead wasting his time following his own erroneous theories.
Appearances in other media[]
Moriarty (book)[]
Athelney Jones is a main character in Moriarty, a 2014 novel by Anthony Horowitz. He works with a Pinkerton's agent named Fredrick Chase to prevent an American criminal mastermind from taking over the criminal network left behind by the death of Professor Moriarty. Jones is shown to have come to idolize Holmes since the Sholto case, and has adopted his methods in an attempt to improve as a detective.
While Jones successfully stops the takeover, he is sadly murdered immediately after arresting the criminal by Chase, who is revealed to be a disguised Moriarty. It turns out that Moriarty had guided the whole investigation as part of a plot to take over the American criminal underworld. Moriarty laments that Jones never actually had the talent to utilize Holmes' methods properly.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (radio series)[]
Jones appears in two episodes of this series of radio dramas written by Bert Coules, where he is portrayed by SiƓn Probert. Jones leads the official police investigation in "The Singular Inheritance of Miss Gloria Wilson" and "The Thirteen Watches", and both times fails to make any progress, leaving Holmes to uncover the true solution.
"The Adventure of the Magical Menagerie"[]
Jones appears in this short story by Lyndsay Faye, collected in The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes recounts his first encounter with Jones to Watson, from when the detective was first beginning his career in deduction.
Sherlock Holmes Canon |
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Sherlock Holmes ā¢ John Watson ā¢ Mycroft Holmes ā¢ Professor Moriarty ā¢ Inspector Lestrade ā¢ Irene Adler |
Secondary Characters |
Mary Watson ā¢ Mrs Hudson ā¢ Tobias Gregson ā¢ Athelney Jones ā¢ Sebastian Moran |
Novels |
A Study in Scarlet ā¢ The Sign of the Four ā¢ The Hound of the Baskervilles ā¢ The Valley of Fear |
Short story collections |
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ā¢ The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ā¢ The Return of Sherlock Holmes His Last Bow ā¢ The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes |
Behind the scenes |
Arthur Conan Doyle ā¢ The Strand Magazine ā¢ Sidney Paget ā¢ Chronology of Sherlock Holmes Cases |