John Raffensperger – författare

The recently unearthed diaries of the young Arthur Conan Doyle provide evidence, if not proof of the that Doyle knew Sherlock Holmes as early as 1878, when Holmes was working in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Bell at the University of Edinburgh. Holmes, a brilliant scientist and an astute medical diagnostician had either dropped out or had been expelled from a London medical school.

This, the first diary, records the adventures of Doyle and Holmes, when they accompany Dr. Bell to Chicago. Dr. Bell gives lectures and demonstrates his surgical technique with Doyle's assistance. Holmes deduces the cause of death in a victim who collapsed on the street and Doyle becomes involved with the local medical students. Together, Doyle and Holmes uncover a plot by ex-confederate officers to assassinate the president and take over the United States.    

The story demonstrates Holmes' amazing skills of observation, diagnosis, his ability to solve crimes and his dogged pursuit of criminals. During this adventure young Arthur Conan Doyle encounters his friend, Robert Louis Stevenson, is abducted by the James gang, falls in love with a red haired Scottish lass and survives a harrowing ride in a hot air balloon.     

The recently discovered diaries of the young Arthur Conan Doyle contain the startling adventures of Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and the Edinburgh surgeon, Joseph Bell in Russia during 1881. At the time, Holmes, a medical school dropout, had become a skilled anatomist, diagnostician and surgeon. Even his most devoted admirers are unaware that Holmes was an undercover agent for Her Majesty's Secret Service before he became a private detective.

Holmes and Doyle accompany Dr. Bell when he travels to St. Petersburg to lecture on antiseptic surgery. Doyle's diary of their adventures reveal the origin of Sherlock Holmes's addiction to cocaine as well as the plots by Prussians and Americans to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. The British are particularly concerned about an ex-officer, driven mad by torture during the Afghan-British war, who is determined to assassinate the Tsar.

Holmes, with his uncanny ability, solves a series of murders by observing seemingly insignificant clews, such as the position of chess pieces, a cigar band and a sick dog. Doyle's attraction to a radical young woman leads to his involvement with students who manufacture bombs. He is thrown in prison and when he visits a bawdy gentlemen's club, a sword-wielding Cossack challenges him to a duel. Doyle meets famous Russians such as Dostoyevsky and Rasputin.

This latest diary will enlighten and enchant all lovers of the Great Detective.

The previous diaries of Arthur Conan Doyle tell of the shadowy real life Sherlock Holmes, a medical school dropout. While in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Bell, a brilliant Edinburgh surgeon, Holmes learned anatomy, surgery, observation and deduction. These skills and his ability to solve crimes led to his recruitment by the British secret service. In this the last of three diaries, Doyle recounts a series of murders and the pursuit of a sinister Russian assassin from Edinburgh to the Yosemite Valley in California. When the case, involving a California millionaire and Chinese tongs becomes desperate, the British secret service sent Sherlock Holmes. The case ended in his death but the great detective lives on in the novels by Arthur Conan Doyle.     

John Raffensperger, MD, a retired pediatric surgeon, operated on babies with birth defects and children with cancer for nearly fifty years then turned to writing medical history and fiction. His interest in Dr. Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh surgeon and the model for Sherlock Holmes led to this trilogy.

Richard Krevolin, playwright, book doctor and artist provided the inspiration and the idea for using lost diaries as a vehicle for telling the story.