Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly - Hardcover

Thomas, Donald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1605981346 ISBN 13: 9781605981345

Publisher: Pegasus Crime, 2010

Synopsis

"Few authors have done as well in bringing these beloved and familiar characters to life. Donald Thomas masterfully evokes the flavor of Doyle‘s original stories of the great detective."―Publishers Weekly

“Have you ever seen a ghost, Mr. Holmes?“ asks Victoria Temple, and Sherlock Holmes, at the height of his powers in 1898, must face a new challenge, one that plunges the great detective into the realm of the supernatural. Miss Temple has been found guilty―but also insane―at her trial for murdering a child under her care. She is locked away in the Broadmoor lunatic asylum, and worse still, she believes fully in her own guilt.

But were the hauntings at the Elizabethan manor house of Bly a vision of the walking dead, perhaps, rather than delusions of her tormented mind? Or could it be that a criminal conspiracy is to blame for the psychic phenomena, as well as a second murder cunningly concealed in the past? In the company of Dr. Watson, the indefatigable Holmes will track down the perpetrators through the occult underworld of Victorian London.

Next, on the eve of World War I, Holmes is confronted with fraud and forgery at the Royal Navy Academy in “The Case of a Boy‘s Honor,“ while back in London, behind the scenes of the Herculaneum Theatre in the Strand, “The Case of the Matinee Idol“ embroils Holmes and Watson directly in an apparent on-stage murder. How did poison get into two Shakesperean goblets when only the victim, now dead, had access to them and the most likely suspect was a mile away with an unbreakable alibi?

About this title

About the Author

Donald Thomas has published forty books, including poetry, fiction, biography, and true crime.  A stage-play based on his work The Return of Sherlock Holmes, was recently produced in Wales.  His biography of Robert Browning was short-listed for the Whitbread Award and he received The Gregory Award from T. S. Eliot personally for his poetry collection Points of Contact.  The Execution of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil and Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly are all available from Pegasus Books. He lives in Bath.

From Booklist

The plethora of Holmes pastiches published since the master detective retired have led him into some unlikely stuff—chasing Nazis, visiting Freud, battling Dracula. The imitators never get quite get the personality right. He’s too sarcastic or too smug, never Doyle’s gleeful hawkshaw who dazzles with deductions, then showers mercy on killers because their victims had it coming. Thomas, in his fifth Holmes volume, comes close, but his Holmes is still too thin-lipped. One of the three longish stories collected here puts Holmes into Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” with Quint and Miss Jessel. Brave try, but Thomas is undone by his love for research, bringing the plot to screeching stops in order to show off what he’s learned at the library. Things almost come right in “The Case of the Matinee Idol,” in which we see a Holmes who would rather play tricks with the law of England than with his own conscience. Certainly not the worst of the Doyle re-creations, this one will provide middling entertainment for those who simply must know what Sherlock’s been doing lately. --Don Crinklaw

About this edition

• Publisher: Pegasus Crime
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1605981346
• ISBN 13: 9781605981345
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368