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Arthur Conan Doyle has just killed Sherlock Holmes and faces the wrath of his readers. And his wife is dying. But, more importantly, a mysterious woman has foreseen her murder and asked him to prevent it, so Doyle and his friend Oscar Wilde journey to a haunted, cursed country house where the river immediately rises, cutting them off from escape. And escape Wilde wants to, from this house filled with odd and potentially dangerous members of the Society for Psychical Research who range from an always-masked Count to a levitating magician, an old Russian palm reader with a monkey as her familiar, and an aristocratic hypnotist, among others.
From the cast of characters alone, we know this is going to be more melodrama than mystery, although there is both a murder and several attempted murders, including that of Doyle himself. If you can get past the opening scene, which verges on unbelievable beyond reason (would Arthur Conan Doyle really fall for this?), and just enjoy the melodrama of ghosts, secret passageways, séances, and curses, the novel has a lot of entertainment value, not least in imagining the friendship between Doyle and Wilde. In fact, their time in London where they also meet with J.M. Barrie, the exploration of Doyle's entanglement in the world of mediums and psychics, and the inclusion of Daniel Dunglas Home (called Hume throughout the book for pronunciation purposes), suggest intriguing possibilities for the series of Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that is promised to follow.
Another interesting aspect of the book arises in the appearances of a ghostly Sherlock Holmes and Doyle's reactions to him from the point of view of his creator, and I suspect Holmes will make more appearances as the series progresses, giving Entwistle further opportunity to examine the relationship between author and character. As for the book at hand, I would have to say it relies heavily on clichés, somewhat awkwardly slips in Wilde's witticisms, frequently verges on the laughably unbelievable when it comes to situations and coincidences, and involves very little character development, but it does tell a pretty good tale, and I'm intrigued by the promise of more mystery solving by the Doyle/Wilde duo.
§ Meredith Frazier, a writer with a background in English literature, lives in Dallas, Texas
Reviewed by Meredith Frazier, March 2014
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