Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati – serie

A young inventor—the man whose name appears in the title of Dr. Watson’s narrative, “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans”—lies dead on the floor of an old house, two bullet holes in his back.   To solve the gruesome murder, Sherlock Holmes enlists the aid of William Gillette, the celebrated American actor renown for his portrayal of the famous detective, and Arthur Conan Doyle, conveniently familiar with the world of spiritualism that serves as backdrop to the brutal crime.  In a plot replete with foreign spies, young lovers, eerie séances, and an array of the dead inventor’s strange mechanical devices, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson press on to discover the identity of Bruce-Partington’s cold-blooded killer.

Quarantines, masks, death-terms familiar to anyone who faced the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918. World-wide, 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.

Quarantines, masks, death-terms familiar to anyone who faced the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918. World-wide, 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."

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.