Baskerville
The Mysterious Tale of Sherlock's Return
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Based on true events in the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this darkly thrilling tale of friendship, rivalry, and ambition tells the backstory of how one of the world’s most celebrated mysteries came to be written.
Dartmoor, 1900. Two friends are roaming the moors: Arthur Conan Doyle – the most famous novelist of his age – who has recently killed off his most popular creation, Sherlock Holmes; and Bertram Fletcher Robinson – Holmes aficionado and editor of the Daily Express.
They are researching a detective novel, a collaboration starring a new hero, set in the eerie stillness of ancient West Country moorland, and featuring a monstrous dog. They already have a title…
London, 1902. The Hound of the Baskervilles is published, featuring Sherlock Holmes back from the dead. Conan Doyle and Fletcher Robinson have not spoken for two years and the book is credited to just one author. It will become one of the most famous stories ever written. But who really wrote it? And what really happened on those moors, to drive the two friends apart?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British journalist O'Connell (For the Love of Letters) fails to make the most of his first novel's central conflict: the up-and-down relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and Bertram Fletcher Robinson, who shared in the creation of what many consider the greatest Holmes adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles. In 1900, aboard a troop ship about to leave South Africa, Doyle, who's been serving as a doctor in the Boer War, encounters Robinson, a journalist and sports writer returning home to England. During the voyage, the two become friends and collaborators. In an afterword, the author explains how he elaborated on the skimpy historical record. For example, Doyle claimed in later years that Robinson supplied only the idea for the plot, while in this retelling, Robinson composes a draft of what he calls The Wolf of the Baskervilles, which has a solution that Doyle ridicules. Serious Sherlockians will best appreciate this uneven mix of fact and fiction.
