#Titanuary ‘The Classified Dossier:Sherlock Holmes

About the book…

A deftly crafted, scintillating mash-up of Victorian mystery and horror – Sherlock Holmes and Mr Hyde encounter villains with unfathomable, terrifying abilities…

1903. A darkness has descended on London. A series of grisly murders are uncovered, trophies taken, bodies arranged and soon there are whispers of Jack the Ripper’s return.

A new client arrives at Baker Street seeking Sherlock Holmes’s Dr Jekyll claims his friend has been wrongfully accused of the hideous crimes, a friend called Mr Edward Hyde, whose very existence relies on a potion administered by the doctor himself.

But the case becomes more complicated, more unsettling than simply proving Mr Hyde’s innocence – for Holmes and Watson unearth beastly transformations, a killer who moves unseen, a secret organisation and then find a traitor in their midst….

Hugest of thanks to the lovely publicists at Titan Books for my gifted review copy of ‘Sherlock Holmes and Mr Hyde’ which was published in hardcover and e-book formats in 2022!

It sets off at a rip roaring pace belying Dr Watson and Holmes sitting in their customary positions at 221 B Baker Street.

Watson has been irrevocably changed, having married Mary Moran and set up his own surgery, he and Holmes have suffered catastrophic losses from fighting the undead-an affront to the logical and thorough mind of Holmes, it has been reframed as a blood borne virus, as he attempts to rationalise the supernatural.

Here, he does much the same with Mr Hyde, initially presenting himself as Dr Jekyll before changing form and carrying out a full consultation with our dynamic duo. Hyde is able to extend his role rather beyond that as Jekyll’s darker half by having fully rationalised conversations, redacting the events of Stevenson’s classic novel, and parsing himself as a mere by product of a scientific experiment.

Holmes sees the re-arrangement of the bodily form as scientifically prompted by Jekyll’s formula, but as Hyde himself says, when Jekyll gets excited, he can change without it.

At the moment, Hyde is laying low having garnered a reputation for violence and murder which he vehemently denies. And in a post-Ripper London, when similar murders begin happening again, then the public faith in the police force needs re-enforcing against a despicable monster who seems to travel through time and space to elude capture…

A still reeling Holmes and Watson are direly in need of jumping into a new investigation, and whilst Holmes champions the rational, pitting him and the ever stolid Watson against a classic of horror literature, takes gumption and a keen artistic wit, both of which Christian Klaver has in spades!

And onwards to book 3, due to be published in March, ‘Sherlock Holmes and Dorian Gray’….

About the author…

Christian Klaver is author of ‘Shadows Over London’ and the Nightwalker Series, and has also written over a dozen novels in both fantasy and sci-fi, as well as for magazines such as Escape Pod and Dark Wisdom.