Book Description

A Sherlock Holmes script sparks controversy and murder in Hollywood in a “most engrossing mystery” from the author of Nine Times Nine (The New Yorker). Anthony Boucher was a literary renaissance man: an Edgar Award–winning mystery reviewer, an esteemed editor of the Hugo Award–winning Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a prolific scriptwriter of radio mystery programs, and an accomplished writer of mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. With a particular fondness for the locked room mystery, Boucher created such iconic sleuths as Los Angeles PI Fergus O’Breen, amateur sleuth Sister Ursula, and alcoholic ex-cop Nick Noble. When Metropolis Pictures announces plans to make a movie out of an Arthur Conan Doyle classic, it triggers outrage from a group of Sherlock Holmes fans called the Baker Street Irregulars. In hopes of calming their protest, the studio invites the five members to advise on the film, and even throws them a celebration in a house numbered 221B. Also on the guest list is Los Angeles police detective A. Jackson. He was hoping to spend his night off hanging out at a Hollywood party with his brother, Paul, the famous actor. Instead he finds himself in one of the most bizarre murder cases he’s ever encountered, complete with cryptograms and a disappearing corpse, all of which results in a “delightfully farcical narrative, which offers a surprise on nearly every page” (The New York Times Book Review).