The Tarleton Murders: Sherlock Holmes in America (Mystery and Suspense Book, British Mysteries)

New Sherlock Holmes Historical Fiction Thriller

Find out the answers to many tantalizing Sherlock Holmes questions in a book that takes you into the dark place in the life of Holmes B.W. (Before Watson), or, as he said, “before my biographer came to glorify me.”

• How did he know so much about the Ku Klux Klan?
• How did he acquire such a rich acquaintance with America?
• Did he really prevent a Second Civil War?

Historical fiction thriller. The Tarleton Murders, the record of “one of those pretty little problems” Holmes solved in the pre-Watson years, has never been brought to light until now. The discovery of this previously unknown manuscript opens a window onto the mysterious early years when Holmes was struggling to set himself up as a “consulting detective”―a previously unknown profession. “I have often wished that I had notes of those cases,” Watson said of Holmes’s early work, and so do we! But in The Tarleton Murders we have an account written by a Watson before there was a Watson.

The Early Sherlock Holmes. So begins a frantic journey that takes Holmes and his friend from Rome (where they save the Pope) to Paris to London to Liverpool, across the Atlantic during the most dangerous hurricane in twenty years, to the backwoods of Georgia (infested by the Klan), and eventually into the midst of Atlanta’s highest society―with growing awareness of a plot that threatens the very existence of the United States. What Holmes called in his usual understated fashion “a pretty little problem” turns out to be “a pretty big problem” indeed! Along the way we encounter George Bernard Shaw, Joel Chandler Harris, Pope Leo XIII, the artist Mary Cassatt, Moriarty himself―and Moriarty’s wife! And in the midst of the fun we make some astounding discoveries, such as the true identity of Moriarty, the fate of the Vatican Cameos, and to top it all off, Mycroft’s schoolboy nickname.

The Tarleton Murders: A corking good early Sherlock Holmes story that any mystery reader will love.