Showing results for "Steve White" in Crime Fiction

The harrowing sequel to A Case of Identity as Sherlock Holmes uncovers a tale as dark as anything seen on the Ancient Greek stage.

Holmes is consulted by Mr Devine on an unusual matter. Mr Devine has apprehended two malefactors in a well-watered garden in the Middle East and is unsure what is an appropriate form of retribution to impose. Holmes, Watson, and Mr Devine discuss the problem at length before arriving at a solution which satisfies all of them. Orlando Pearson himself then pens an essay setting out a radical theory about Sherlock Holmes and this theory is given further substance in an extraordinary fragment of Dr Watson’s writing found in the Public Record Office long after Watson’s death.

Why does Irene Adler, mistress of newspaper tycoon, Robert Munroe, lock herself into a cupboard several times a day? The antipodean magnate wants to know. And why is former Prime Minister, Charles Sedgefield, causing delays to the publication of a report on a recent Middle East war? As a representative of the British government, Mycroft wants to know.

Holmes and Watson are just back at their quarters, having solved the case, when the wrongdoer they have just identified interrupts their breakfast. A fourth student, his main rival in the long jump, is behaving in a very peculiar manner and is carrying all before him in the field. The trail takes Holmes and Watson to a barber’s shop where they acquire a preparation that the barber markets as a performance enhancer, but this is by no means the end of a murky trail to discover how to win Olympic gold.

Holmes meets Joseph Haydn in London and the two form an instant bond. This encounter and a later one with Haydn's young acquaintance, Beethoven, assume a new importance when Holmes and Watson travel to Vienna on a diplomatic mission and are consulted by Constanze Mozart, widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

How can the insurance companies keep on producing record profits when the economic theories of Professor Alfred Marshall and his protégé John Maynard Keynes suggest that this should be impossible when their prices can be easily compared? The Chancellor of the Exchequer would like an answer and commissions Sherlock Holmes to find out.

Mycroft gives Holmes an urgent commission to find documents hidden by Oberstein, although this commission arises out of a diplomatic deal over which Holmes has the gravest misgivings. In a coup de maitre, Holmes finds the documents at the very last point in the time given to him by Mycroft, but Mycroft is totally distracted when he delivers them. Holmes instigates investigations of his own and uncovers a shocking scandal. But will he be able to pursue his investigation to its natural conclusion, or will realpolitik intervene?

In May 1941, Hitler's Deputy, Rudolf Heβ flew solo to Great Britain. The reason for his flight remained a mystery throughout the rest of the War as he brought no new peace proposals, provided no new insight into Hitler's plans, and did not claim political asylum. In May 1945 and with the war almost at an end, the British Government must decide whether to send the frequently overwrought Heβ back to Germany to face trial on war crimes charges.

Holmes and Watson are plunged into the secret underworld of 1925 London, where a serial killer of musical (gay) men is afoot. The killer has a little list, and Sherlock is on it. Why? And what have the Bloomsbury Group and the Diogenes Club got to do with anything? Thanks to Royal Jelly, Holmes is a fit 71-year-old who has lost his interest in bees and returned to detecting. He's not quite as sharp as he used to be, but he's still pretty sharp, and a bit of a vigilante in his old age.

Valuable diamonds are missing, and the thumbprint of one Reuben Hornby is discovered in some blood at the bottom of the safe from where they were taken. An open and shut case, surely. Or is it? For reasons known only to himself, Doctor John Thorndyke has some doubts about the evidence. But to prove the innocence of a young man he must make his case in open court through the use of the latest Edwardian science. Will Dr. Thorndyke succeed, or will the case of the red thumb mark prove to be not only his first case but also his last?

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson are returning to London from Bucharest after the great detective has interceded in a delicate matter relating to the Rumanian Royal House. As they depart from Bucharest they receive their mail forwarded from London. Doctor Watson opens a distressing letter from his niece, Mina, now living in Budapest with her young husband, Janos, a newly qualified lawyer. It seems that the young man has not returned from a business assignment in Transylvania.

It is the last night before Watson’s second wedding. Holmes tells Watson of his utter vanquishment by an adversary he never met in a tale set in 1880s Germany and featuring Goethe, Beethoven, Karl Benz, and Bertha Benz. By the end of this story, the listener would have found out about Holmes’ role in the invention of the motor car, powered flight, and the mobile phone, as well as his involvement in the discovery of a 10th symphony of Beethoven.

Gottlieb von Cramm, a German tennis star of the 1930s, petitions Holmes for help. The sportsman is being blackmailed on a matter of the utmost delicacy, and when the blackmailer reveals all to the National Socialist authorities, it is Holmes who comes to the rescue by asking Reichsmarschall Herman Göring to intervene. But is the better than expected outcome to the case a result of Holmes's intervention, or is Cramm's glamourous mother keeping her own role to herself?

Holmes is charged by the permanent special adviser to the prime minister, his brother Mycroft, to plot a new course for Great Britain following the country's vote in a plebiscite to secede from the Entente Cordiale. Holmes demonstrates that politics truly is an art and that all things are possible as he travels to Washington, Moscow, and Paris meeting statesmen who bear no resemblance at all to the present-day holders of the equivalent posts.

Holmes investigates a major industry and finds there is more to smoke than meets the eye. Orlando Pearson, Watson's successor as the assistant of Sherlock Holmes, was entrusted by the doctor with notes on cases too controversial to publish at the time.

A must for all lovers of serious sleuthing. In Kafka's The Trial, Josef K (here rendered Joseph Carr) is arrested one morning, although he has not done anything wrong, and is put on trial although no charge is ever disclosed to him. Here, Holmes conducts his own investigation into the arrest and subsequent legal process. His solution has uncanny pre-echoes of the early 21st century banking crisis and, in an extraordinary twist, Watson's text even name-checks some of the people that caused it.

Dr. Watson is in his surgery when there is an unexpected knock at the door. It is Sherlock Holmes, who explains that he has arranged a meeting with an Italian musicologist, Alberto Gentili, who has found some long-lost autograph manuscripts of the almost unknown 18th century Venetian composer, Antonio Vivaldi. Gentili explains how the manuscripts represent only half of a larger collection. He wants to find the other half before someone else finds it and disperses the collection.

Holmes and Watson are seized by Edward Albert, the Prince of Wales, who wants them to find evidence that his mother is unfit to serve as queen. At Balmoral, Holmes and Watson witness the aged Queen Victoria engage in some highly questionable behavior.

Louis Westhouse, Windibank's employer, commissions Holmes to investigate Windibank's peculiar behavior in the office. The day after Holmes completes his investigation, Inspector Gregson brings news of three deaths at Windibank's house. Gregson and Holmes investigate but cannot explain the deaths. It is only when the corpses are taken away and the blinds are drawn that Holmes elucidates some truly grotesque events.

It is March 1938. A print worker petitions Holmes about the disappearance of a fellow worker at the Daily Mail. Holmes investigates, and after interviews with the newspaper’s proprietor, Viscount Rothermere, and with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, it becomes clear the missing print worker has died fulfilling a commission for the German ambassador, although it is not clear what the commission is.