Before writing puzzle-based books, Ormond Sacker served as note-taker and assistant to a London-based consulting detective, a role he held until being controversially superseded by a more qualified and less strangely named replacement. As a young man, Sacker studied medicine at St Bartholemews before joining the British Army, where he was attached as a surgeon to the Berkshire Regiment of Foot. It was specifically feet that led to his dismissal, following an odd number (both in quantity and circumstance) of amputation errors. To this day he stands by his assertion that "left" and "right" are subjective terms that depend upon which end of the table one is standing. His military training, international travels, and experience of curious crime, together with an intimate relationship with the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have given him a unique view of the world. Such a character is clearly the ideal author of a book of Holmes-based conundrums and problems. Ormond Sacker is sometimes mixed up. At such times he is no card smoker, and lives in cranked rooms.