The Devil's Blaze (2022)

The second novel by Robert J. Harris set during the time of the Universal Basil Rathbone films. Why then the cover image of Rathbone and Bruce from the Victorian-set 20th Century Fox films? That's the true mystery!

The world’s greatest detective returns. 

London, 1943. Across the city prominent figures in science and the military are bursting into flame and being incinerated. Convinced that the Germans have deployed a new terror weapon, a desperate government turns to the one man who can track down the source of this dreadful menace - Sherlock Holmes.

The quest for a solution drives Holmes into an uneasy alliance with the country’s most brilliant scientific genius, Professor James Moriarty. Only Holmes knows that, behind his façade of respectability, Moriarty is the mastermind behind a vast criminal empire. As they pursue the trail of incendiary murders, Holmes is quite sure that the professor is playing a double game and that there lies ahead a duel to the death which they cannot both survive.

A tribute to the classic Universal Pictures Sherlock Holmes film series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

Title: The Devil's Blaze
Author: Robert J. Harris
Year: 2022
Publisher: Polygon
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Under a Raven's Wing (2021)

A collection of shorts stories by Stephen Volk that finds a young Sherlock Holmes in Paris under the mentorship of Auguste Dupin.

The Apprenticeship of Sherlock Holmes 

In 1870s Paris, long before meeting his Dr Watson, the young man who will one day become the world’s greatest detective finds himself plunged into a mystery that will change his life forever. 

A brilliant man―C. Auguste Dupin―steps from the shadows. Destined to become his mentor. Soon to introduce him to a world of ghastly crime and seemingly inexplicable horrors. The spectral tormentor that is being called, in hushed tones, The Phantom of the Opera . . . The sinister old man who visits corpses in the Paris morgue . . . An incarcerated lunatic who insists she is visited by creatures from the Moon . . .  A hunchback discovered in the bell tower of Notre Dame . . .  And―perhaps most shocking of all―the awful secret Dupin himself hides from the world. 

Tales of Mystery, Imagination, and Terror. Investigated in the company of the darkest master of all.

Title: Under a Raven's Wing
Author: Stephen Volk
Year: 2021
Publisher: PS Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk