Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati

When misadventure led a schoolboy in London to employment at Baker Street, few could have guessed where his introduction to Sherlock Holmes would lead. But as the lad matures and he finds himself caught in the middle of a murder investigation, his friendship with Holmes and Watson lures him into the role of detective. "Billy" documents his experiences, and soon his sleuthing skills not only bring him to another murder, but also lay the foundation for his metamorphosis into a famous mystery writer, the novelist the world now knows as Raymond Chandler.

They called her "Lady Stewart" when she was married to a British aristocrat. They called her "Miss Cora "when she ran a brothel in Florida. But she called herself "Mrs. Crane" when she asked Sherlock Holmes to locate her common-law husband, writer Stephen Crane, who'd gone missing in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. In their attempt to fulfil the lady's request, Holmes and Watson encounter a world of celebrity authors, terrorist bombings, and haunted manor houses. But it is only when Stephen Crane falls victim to a notorious blackmailer that the master detective and his partner find themselves face-to-face with cold-blooded murder. Under darkened skies, a solitary apparition stood brightly illuminated on the ship's gloomy deck. Or so it seemed. Cloaked in a long white raincoat-the same gleaming duster he'd worn in the face of Spanish gunfire at San Juan Heights-Stephen Crane looked for all the world like the ghost so many people thought he'd already become.

Sherlock Holmes had never met a writer who had ridiculed him as bitterly as Samuel L. Clemens had. For that matter, Holmes had never met a writer who fancied himself a detective. Yet Sam Clemens not only unraveled Holmes' investigation into the murder of the hot-blooded woman on Thor Bridge, but also, while writing as Mark Twain, belittled Holmes' highly-touted detecting skills. In this recently discovered narrative, Doctor Watson sets the record straight. He reveals other crimes related to the original murder while relating what prompted Clemens in a 1902 short story to deride the famous detective. Spurred on by such criticism, as well as by clues discovered in a classic tale by Bret Harte, Sherlock Holmes begins a new investigation, one that leads Holmes and Watson from the gardens of Windsor Castle to the spires of Oxford University in their efforts to track down a deranged assassin bent on wreaking even more havoc.

In 1910, American author and social critic Jack London began writing The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., a work that he never completed. Now, thanks to the recently discovered manuscript of Dr. John Watson, we know why. The early part of London's book describes a secret organization - scoffed at or ignored by police officials - that conspires to murder influential political and social leaders. Not until Sherlock Holmes is provoked into action by threats close to home does anyone appear able to stop the Assassination Bureau. As Holmes and Watson proceed, they uncover devilish plots involving the deaths of some of the most prominent figures in history-from American Presidents to European heads of state, from murderous gangsters to muckraking writers like Jack London himself. With a deadly timing-device ticking, Sherlock Holmes hopes to prevent any further murders from threatening world peace. But by 1912, is he already too late?

Quarantines, masks, death-terms familiar to anyone who faced the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918. Worldwide, it is estimated that the horrifying influenza killed more than 50 million people, significantly more than did the guns of the Great War, which was just then coming to a close. And, yet no one has ever heard from Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Watson concerning their own experiences surviving the terrible virus-until now. In a recently-discovered manuscript, Dr. Watson reveals the secret, which for years had kept him silent about the deadly pandemic. Only when he meets the eccentric American novelist Sinclair Lewis is the truth pried free and the story of an ingenious murder revealed.

One moment the lovely young woman was walking through the Battle of Hastings exhibition at the British Museum; the next, she lay dead on the checkered museum floor, a Norman arrow protruding from her breast. Inspector Lestrade believed he had solved the mystery, but almost immediately recognized that Scotland Yard needed the help of Sherlock Holmes. From London to the Lake District, the master detective, along with his colleague Dr. Watson and recently-met American mystery writer, Anna Katharine Green, follows a string of clues that ultimately exposes the intricacies of a tragic love story-a woeful tale whose twists and turns reveal what Watson accurately called "the unhappiest of Holmes's adventures."

Sherlock Holmes examines the body of a murdered scrubwoman that lies on the floor of the South Kensington Museum of Art. But it is not a real corpse he looks at, for those remains have been removed by the coroner. The body Holmes studies appears in a drawing of the murder scene precisely rendered by an American art student. The drawing leads Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the artist, a young Frank Norris before he turns his talents to writing, across the English countryside in search of the killer. From the shops in the Strand to the pier at Brighton, from the lions of Trafalgar Square to the coalfields of Lancashire, the trio, along with Inspectors Lestrade and Gregson, find themselves entangled in a tale of gold, greed, and murder.

During his first trip to England in 1899, murder was the last thing that Hamlin Garland, the so-called "Dean of American Letters," expected to find. More predictable were his descriptions of American baseball and visits with notables like Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw. Yet when Garland tells Sherlock Holmes of a suspicious death that occurred at Hearthstone Hall, the detective replies, "You have described the ingredients of a classic murder mystery, a dead dowager empress and a collection of courtiers any one of whom might be the killer." From the ominous confines of a gothic manor house to the foreboding terrain of the Devil's Punchbowl, Garland, Holmes, and Dr. Watson seek to thwart a cold-blooded killer before the list of victims expands any further.

Dr. John H. Watson could not anticipate that a favour for the noted American mystery writer and forensic dentist, Rodrigues Ottolengui, would result in the discovery of a heinous murder. But that is what happens when in helping the American, Watson finds himself at a shooting match in a London villa that ultimately leads him to a charred corpse lying face down in a fireplace. With the members of a shooters club as suspects, Watson and Scotland Yard are quick to welcome Sherlock Holmes to the investigation. Relying on Ottolengui's help, the master detective uncovers the true story behind the horrible death.

In 1887 on his way to prison, the convicted murderer, Vincent Louder Lovelace, was killed in a horrific collision in London between a police wagon and an omnibus. Though Lovelace never kept his date with the hangman, his accidental death resulted in justice being served. Or so the authorities continued to believe until the arrival at 221B Baker Street of the American author, Julian Hawthorne, son of the famous writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Julian informs Sherlock Holmes that the dead man is not only alive and well, but also innocent of murder. As Holmes begins to uncover incriminating facts, he is confronted by deadly threats from the real killer who insists such details must remain hidden. In the end, Holmes and Dr. Watson can only hope that their wits and an erratic Julian Hawthorne will enable them to identify the true perpetrator of the grisly crime.