The Night Calls: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes - Softcover

Pirie, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933648791 ISBN 13: 9781933648798

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2008

Synopsis

"Ranks with the best of the Doyle canon."—Times Literary Supplement

As a young medical student, Arthur Conan Doyle—the creator of Sherlock Holmes—studied under the pioneering forensic investigator Dr. Joseph Bell. Critically acclaimed author David Pirie has created an engrossing series of novels that pairs the two as partners in criminal investigations in the dark underworlds of Victorian England.

The Night Calls chronicles a most frightening and disturbing case: their encounter with the man who prefigures Holmes's arch-nemesis Moriarty. This literary tour de force takes Doyle and Bell from the heart of old Edinburgh to the depths of London's most violent streets, where they confront this villainous reprobate who is as brilliant as he is merciless.

About this title

Review:

Inspired by the discovery that Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle attended medical school in Scotland with one of the 19th century's most notorious serial killers, David Pirie's The Night Calls reels out a grim but engrossing tale that suggests a model for Holmes's foremost adversary, Professor James Moriarty.

A series of bizarre assaults on women in the brothels of 1878 Edinburgh draws the attention of Dr. Joseph Bell, a surgeon, charismatic teacher, and forensic expert who periodically applies his deductive skills to solving crimes. Together with a young Conan Doyle, his "trusted clerk and pupil," Bell follows the trail of an elusive attacker who leads them on crepuscular chases through gloomy Victorian streets and to a blood-filled room where the puzzle of his motive becomes deeper. However, Conan Doyle is occupied with other matters, as well. He's fast developing a fondness for fellow student Elsbeth Scott, whose interest in promoting educational rights for women has made her many enemies, and whose sister, the wife of a hypocritical philanthropist, grows sicker by the day--either as a result of disease or deviousness. The future author is disturbed, too, by his father's deteriorating mental condition. Assisting Bell offers Conan Doyle some release from worry--at least until their controlling quarry becomes a threat to Miss Scott. Pirie's plot only gains more perplexity and darkness as its action shifts to London, forcing the logical Bell and his impetuous amanuensis to contend with opium fiends, disappearing corpses, a severed head with "horrifying power," and continuing taunts by a murderer who believes that "evil is freedom."

While British author Pirie's previous Bell-Conan Doyle novel, The Patient's Eyes, was more of a whodunit, liberally employing Sherlockian investigative techniques, the rather more smoothly constructed The Night Calls concentrates equally on drama and the morally incongruent psychology of its principal players. This novel blends fact with fiction in a mesmerizing tale that boasts a frightening, cliffhanger ending. A sequel is planned. --J. Kingston Pierce

From the Inside Flap:

Edinburgh, 1878. A series of bizarre assaults on women in its notorious brothels has baffled police. The university is in turmoil over its decision to admit women. And young medical student Arthur Conan Doyle meets two men who will change his life.

The charismatic and brilliant university academic Dr. Joseph Bell is also a pioneering forensic detective. As he and Doyle begin to investigate the increasingly freakish crimes, they realize they are dealing with a new and terrifying kind of murderer -- a man who kills for the art of it.

Moving from the black heart of old Edinburgh to the opium dens of London?s docklands, The Night Calls is a compelling story of the fight against an evil that would one day be immortalized as ?Moriarty?.. .

About this edition

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1933648791
• ISBN 13: 9781933648798
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 370