Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, eventually studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and built his writerly ambitions there. He published his first short story when he was only 20 and still deep in his medical training. He achieved his Doctor of Medicine in 1885 and continued professional studies as he continued to write and write and write. In 1886 he sold A Study in Scarlet, featuring a detective who was based on an instructor he had in medical school. It was published a year later, and the definition of what constituted a mystery in Western fiction began to be forever changed.
Within a few years of the debut of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle was ready to kill him off and move on to his many other projects, thus betraying a pattern of never quite understanding what was best for himself as a writer. Eventually, however, Holmes and Watson were featured in 56 short stories and 4 novels. The tension between rationality and suspense, between dissection and animation, was a powerful creative drive for Doyle. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to have understood it, and sometimes it is captured perfectly, flawlessly. It has been a gift to over a century of other writers, those who work within the canon’s inspiration and those who push back in various ways.
Doyle kept writing his science fiction and his beloved historical novels as he nailed down immortality with Sherlock Holmes. We carry what we can of what is in print. He is a good writer for that bridge age between YA and adult literature, by the way. And the comfort of his storytelling style, even when one thrills to the Hound of the Baskervilles all over again, makes him a writer for all ages and tastes and backgrounds. Enjoy!
Moriarty
Moriarty
The game is once again afoot in this thrilling mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The House of Silk and The Word is Murder, sanctioned by the Conan Doyle estate, which explores what really happened when Sherlock Holmes and his arch nemesis Professor Moriarty tumbled to their doom at the Reichenbach Falls--now available in a limited Olive Edition.
"The author turns up the suspense, the sleuths turn up the clues, and crooks end up dead all while Moriarty's specter hovers. Anything but elementary, this clever thriller is sure to please Sherlock fans."--People Magazine, Book of the Week Review
Days after Holmes and Moriarty disappear into the waterfall's churning depths, Frederick Chase, a senior investigator at New York's infamous Pinkerton Detective Agency, arrives in Switzerland. Chase brings with him a dire warning: Moriarty's death has left a convenient vacancy in London's criminal underworld. There is no shortage of candidates to take his place--including one particularly fiendish criminal mastermind.
Chase is assisted by Inspector Athelney Jones, a Scotland Yard detective and devoted student of Holmes's methods of deduction, whom Conan Doyle introduced in The Sign of Four. The two men join forces and fight their way through the sinuous streets of Victorian London in pursuit of this sinister figure, a man much feared but seldom seen, who is determined to stake his claim as Moriarty's successor.
--Financial Times