The Holmes Affair

Arthur Conan Doyle curled his brow tightly and thought only of murder. I'm going to kill him," he muttered.

DECEMBER 1893. Hungry for the latest Sherlock Holmes installment, Londoners ripped open their Strand magazines, only to reel in horror. Holmes's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, had killed their hero off. London spiraled into mourning, with crowds donning black armbands in grief, branding Conan Doyle an assassin, and demanding an explanation. But the cryptic author said nothing.

Eight years later, however, just as abruptly as he had "murdered" Holmes in "The Final Problem," Conan Doyle brought him back for a new series of adventures. Again, the author said nothing. After his death, the diary that would have shed light on his mysterious reasons, chronicling this interim period in detail, went missing. In the decades since it has never been found.

Or has it?

JANUARY 2010. When Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes society, the Baker Street Irregulars, he never imagines he's about to emback on the hunt for the holy grail of Holmesophiles — the missing diary. But when the world's leading Doylean scholar turns up dead in his hotel room, it is Harold — using wisdom gleaned from countless detective stories — who must take up the search, both for the diary and for the killer. In a journey that hurtles from New York to London, and from the present day into the historical milieu of Conan Doyle, Harold delves perilously into the history of Sherlock Holmes and his creator — discovering a secret that proves to be anything but "elementary."