All Of Your Questions, Answered*

Yes. Many of our detectives order Dear Holmes for themselves, or together with a friend or family member. Solving together is a great way to stay connected with friends and family.

If you love solving crimes and immersing yourself in Victorian-style mysteries, Dear Holmes is for you.

As a Dear Holmes member, the #1 thing you’ll receive is mail. Before your first mystery, you’ll receive a welcome letter in the mail from Sherlock Holmes. Then, for each mystery, you’ll receive three clue letters from your latest Victorian client, followed by a letter from Holmes walking you through his solution to the case.

Each of your letters will arrive to your mailbox on fine stationery, and all of our letters are mailed with real stamps (No metered postage, we promise).

With your membership, you’ll also have access to the Dear Holmes private podcast, with audiobook-quality narrations of each of your clue letters.

Finally, you’ll be eligible to compete for the coveted title of Featured Detective, which is awarded to one detective after each mystery (and the accompanying prize).

Sound like the experience for you? You can order right here.

Each of our mysteries requires a different set of skills to solve, and they vary in difficulty, but all should be solveable by most detectives (readers) once all the evidence has arrived and been thoroughly analyzed.

If you’re a particularly talented detective, you may sometimes be able to arrive at the solution after your second or third clue letter.

Our mysteries are self-contained. Outside research is not generally required to solve our mysteries, though it is enriching if you have the time for it (many of our cases are grounded in some historical group or event).

No, they do not. As a Dear Holmes member, you’ll face a new, never-before-seen mystery each and every month. If your membership expires and you renew, you’ll receive an all-new set of mysteries to solve.

A new mystery starts each and every month. If you’d like to start as soon as possible, select next month at checkout. If you’d like to start after a milestone (Christmas, Hanukkah, a birthday, etc.), select the month that follows it (January for Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s).

The short answer: It’s complicated, but most welcome letters arrive 5-7 business days into your start month. Your first clue letter should arrive soon after that, and letters should continue at approximately a weekly cadence from there.

The long answer: We schedule our mailings to provide you with maximum flexibility to update your start date and mailing address before your membership begins.

To do this, we aim to send out your first letter (a welcome letter) on either the first or second weekday of your scheduled start month.

We’ll mail your first clue letter a few days after your welcome letter departs our mailroom, then continue to mail you a letter about once a week until your membership expires.

Mail can be unpredictable (that’s part of the fun), but in most cases, your letters will arrive 4-6 business days after leaving our office. We mail from Washington, DC, so the closer you are to our office, the faster we’d expect your first letter to arrive.

Please Note: By the 10th day of your start month, if you live in the US, you should have received at least one letter. If you haven’t, please reach out to our support team so we can investigate and expedite a replacement letter.

Dear Holmes mysteries are written by a carefully selected group of modern Sherlock Holmes authors (our mystery makers) and edited by MX Publishing, the world's largest specialist Sherlock Holmes publisher, in collaboration with Letterjoy.

For our latest pricing, please refer to our pricing page. For renewal pricing, please see our renewal page.

Note: If you’re a veteran, an educator, or a first responder and you’re planning to purchase Dear Holmes, please reach out to us so that we can set you up with a discount code; you’ve earned it.

We accept solutions by mail, telegram, and via our online form. For more information on solving our mysteries and entering the Featured Detective competition, visit Dearholmes.com/solve.

No. We don’t want to spoil your surprise, so the first communication your recipient will get from us will be their welcome letter, which will arrive after the start date you selected at checkout. Their first clue letter will arrive simultaneously or shortly after. We do recommend notifying your recipient in advance of their start date so that they know to keep an eye out for any mysterious mail.

We have a brief welcome/explanation letter from Mr. Holmes which you can download and customize here. Some customers mail this to their recipient, hand-deliver it, put it under a tree, or email it. Others get creative, hiding it (the first mystery) or sending it by telegram. Regardless, it’s available for your use.

Solutions are revealed in a letter from Sherlock Holmes to members at the end of each mystery. Shortly after every member’s solution letter has been mailed, we post a transcript of the letter to our blog. Shortly after that, we name our monthly Featured Detective.

We believe in the power of paper. Our letters are designed to be read on premium paper stocks, folded crisply into a cream-colored envelope and mailed to your door with a real stamp.

Our goal is to help you live, for a few minutes each week, like a victorian-era detective, and if you read our letters on an iPhone, the experience just wouldn’t feel right. For that reason, we don’t currently offer our letters in digital form.

Yes, with two caveats:

1. International postage is more expensive, so we apply a modest postal surcharge to international orders.

2. International mail can take between 7 and 21 days to arrive (This can vary considerably based on the reliability of your national postal carrier).

Looking for practice cases? If you’re an active Dear Holmes member, you can listen to narrations of past cases via your private podcast feed.

If you'd like to try your hand at some of our old cases, join our Practice Case Club.

Another question? You’re thinking like a detective already! The fastest way to get in touch with our support team is via the form on our customer support page.

You can also reach out via email or, fittingly, by letter. Our mailing address is 1101 14th Street Northwest, Suite 950, Washington, D.C. 20005.