Exclusive interview with author Vaughn Entwistle and a review of the second book in his Sherlock Holmes mystery series
Rating: 3 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I have been a lifelong Sherlock Holmes fan and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a personal hero of mine,” says The Dead Assassin author Vaughn Entwistle. “Every detective needs a Watson, mainly in order to explain the plot to the reader. Originally, I was going to team Conan Doyle with C.J. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. I wrote a test scene where the two authors met at the Savoy. As I was riffing on the idea, I thought it would be fun to have Oscar Wilde enter the restaurant. However, Wilde’s overwhelming personality didn’t just steal the scene, he hijacked the entire novel. The combination of the brash and flamboyant Wilde with the staid and sober Conan Doyle set the pages on fire. I knew I had found my sleuthing duo.”
In this second book in the The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Entwistle brings detailed descriptions about where and what. Having Oscar Wilde join Doyle for sleuthing is an ingenious pairing. The reboot of Holmes and Watson is a must-read for fans. However, it could have made more of an emotional connection.
Scotland Yard has Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle analyze a crime scene that has baffled them. A senior member of Her Majesty’s government has been brutally murdered. Next to him is the body of Charlie Higginbotham, a known pickpocket and petty thief. However, Higginbotham was hanged at Newgate Prison for his crimes two weeks prior. Conan Doyle and his friend Oscar Wilde find themselves swept up in an investigation so bizarre it defies conventional thinking and puts the lives of their loved ones, the nation, and even the monarch herself in peril.
“The fog became another character in The Dead Assassin, hindering Conan Doyle and Wilde’s investigation while cloaking the nefarious deeds of the murderers,” says Entwistle. “Everyone knows about the famous London fogs. But my research showed just how deadly they were. London sits on a marshy, low-lying ground and has always had fogs. But Victorian fogs were actually smogs, a combination of fog and smoke from thousands of chimneys burning coal.”
To write about two such well-known authors, Entwistle did extensive research. “By the time I came to write the novel I was so immersed in the characters I was having dreams in which they talked to me. While writing, I keep a small book of Wilde’s witticisms next to my keyboard and read a few pages before commencing work each morning. Since writing my first novel, The Angel of Highgate, I have been living a large part of my life in the Victorian era. I read the diaries and collected letters of both Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde to gain insight into the way they actually spoke and thought.”
Entwistle has written short stories published in literary journals, plays and screenplays that have won awards. The Revenant of Thraxton Hall was a finalist for the 2015 Nancy Pearl award, a competition run by the Pacific Northwest Writers’s Association. The Paranormal Casebooks series is being considered for development by a British film studio.
The Angel of Highgate will be published by Titan Books in December, and the author is currently writing the third book in series, The Faerie Vortex, in which Doyle and Wilde investigate the mysterious disappearance of two young girls whose mother claims they have been abducted by faeries. He’s also writing a collection of ghost stories.
Entwistle lives in the city of Wells in Somerset. When he landed his book deal, he and his wife moved to England. “As a writer who specializes in historical fiction, much of which takes place in England, it is much easier to carry out research and actually walk the ground of the places I write about,” her sayus. He had lived in Seattle for twenty years and was born in Weston, Ontario, Canada to British parents.
The Dead Assassin Series: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Book 2) by Vaughn Entwistle. Hardcover, 352 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (June 9, 2015) Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-1250035066 $26.99
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