Rodney Stone

The Regency prize ring: a Sussex boy goes up to London with his uncle, a Corinthian of the first water, and finds bare-knuckle fighting, gambling, Brighton, the Prince of Wales — and a murder in a locked house. Conan Doyle modelled Holmes on his old professor and considered his historical novels his real work; the fight in this one is the best account of the prize ring in English fiction, and the boxing men agreed.