Sherlock, son of Sigerson?

      

Firstly I suppose I should say that the following is mere conjecture, though pretty thoroughly researched as far as it goes. But I don't actually believe a large part of it myself, having even more outlandish theories up my sleeve. I just can't resist starting a few hares.

I suppose the first question we should ask is this: why does Sherlock Holmes never mentions his parents, not even if they are alive or dead? It seems strange, doesn’t it? Here are a few more questions which follow:

1.       Why is Sherlock so distant from his brother Mycroft?
2.       Why are the brothers separated in age by seven years?
3.       Why did neither of the brothers inherit their  father's estate?
4.       Why did he choose the name Sigerson as his alias?

Well, then, what do we know about Holmes’s parents? Very little. We know from The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter that: “My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class." 

Let’s assume for the moment that his father was one such squire (although it’s interesting the way he phrases it, skirting actual mention of his father). Let’s call him Squire Holmes. Perhaps he is a Sussex landowner, since Holmes elects to retire in Sussex. We’ll come back to him.

We know a little more of Sherlock’s mother, however, since he goes on to mention “my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.” Vernet, the French artist was a very real person, or rather very real people, a family of artists who mainly married into other artistic families, all quite successful. Let’s take a look at the generations:

• Jean Vernet, d. 1753
• Claude Vernet, d. 1789
• Carle Vernet, d. 1836
•  Horace Vernet, d. 1863

While two of his forebears had sisters (Jean had five, but they lived early enough that Holmes would have referred to them as great or even great-great grandmothers.  Carle's sister Emilie, was guillotined during the Terror. Her daughter Louise-Josephe, was married twice, but neither of her husbands were named Holmes, according to the genealogies. Claude had only brothers.

So it’s almost certainly Horace Vernet that Holmes was referring to. And while the fame of Vernet has been swept away by Manet, Monet, and the rest of the Impressionists, it’s worth noting that he was in his time the most famous of French painters, fabulously successful.

Only Horace’s sister, Camille (b. 1788 d. 1858) therefore, could be his grandmother. Camille wed Hippolyte LeComte, another successful painter, and had three children: Emil (another painter), Fanny (another painter), and Louise. Genealogical records are silent on whether Louise was also a painter (and silent on everything about her other than her name and birthdate), but there can be little doubt she knew her way around an easel. 

Fanny was born in 1809, Louise in 1815. Since Sherlock was born (according to most chronologists) in 1854, that would mean Louise would have had him at the age of 39—a dangerous age to give birth, especially in the Victorian era. Indeed, her first child, Mycroft, would have been born when she was 32. We can eliminate Fanny from our calculations. At 45, she almost certainly would have been too old for childbirth. Even at Louse’s age, childbirth would have been a dangerous proposition.

Perhaps the reason no other siblings are mentioned is that Mrs. Holmes had a number of miscarriages? This would certainly explain the age gap between the two brothers.

But how would this tame English squire and the bohemian French lady ever have met? And why marry? I’m afraid it was not for love, although Louise Vernet-LeComte was probably a fascinating woman, even though, in the parlance, an “old maid.”

Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell

 With a couple of his recent Sherlock Holmes pastiches, Nicolas Meyer has stepped up his game. Not in terms of plotting or character, at which he has always been the gold standard, or in his channeling of the voice and more importantly the heart of John Watson (for Watson's heart is Sherlock's heart, much as Watson's voice is Sherlock's voice). But the world of Sherlock Holmes is essentially domestic, with criminals who will be dealt with by the courts (once Holmes has revealed then to Scotland Yard). But in The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols and now his latest, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegraph from Hell, the author moves Holmes onto the world stage, raising the stakes of his investigations enormously.

The plot is simple: what if the outcome of World War I depended upon the contents of a telegram, and Britain were desperate to know the contents of that telegram? Well, it did. The story of the Zimmerman Telegram is historical fact. Meyer's inspired move is to couple that fact to Doyle's (or Watson's) story "His Last Bow," which hints at Holmes's role in the war about to engulf Europe. And thereby hangs a tale that takes Holmes and Watson in their twilight years from London to Washington to Mexico City, dogged by assassins every step of the way.

The truth is, this isn't really a detective story, though it's strewn with Holmes's customary legerdemain. And it's not really a spy story, though Watson can hardly turn around without bumping into a spy. It's a coming of age story for a man in his sixties who has come to realize that his fog-bound streets, hansom cabs, and skills at single-stick are not enough to see him through the dangerous new world of the 20th century. He must confront his own parochialism, the smallness of his lifelong efforts against evil.  

Don't misunderstand me. There's plenty of adventure and derring-do in this novel, but there's an elegiac mood to it, too. And that raises it above Meyer's previous efforts. Which makes it all the more worth the read.

Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell

[I wouldn't add this in a review for Amazon or Goodreads since I don't think a review should be about the reviewer, but if you're reading it on my blog, you know that I've written some Sherlock Holmes novels myself, and have some idea of the pitfalls involved in this kind of novel. And you've probably heard me mention that Meyer's The Seven Per-cent Solution was the inspiration for my own efforts. So imagine my consternation when, in the middle of editing The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, I learned that Meyer was about to come out with his own Sherlock Holmes meets the mummy tale, The Return of the Pharaoh, and how relieved I was to learn that the pharaoh in his tale was not Tutankhamun and his story was nothing like mine. Which is preface to say that I came upon the story of the Zimmerman Telegram about a year ago and contemplated writing a Holmes short story based on it. I thank procrastination I didn't go ahead with that one.]

KRL review of the Pharaoh's Heart

"The Strange Case of the Pharaoh’s Heart is a paranormal romp with Holmes and Watson, and a time warp to the well-researched 1920s, from glittering haunts of the rich to the tombs of the Valley of the Kings."

Read the entire review at KRL News and Reviews.

Q&A with Fresh Fiction

 

How did you decide where your book was going to take place?

Luxor and London were pretty much de rigeur for a story about Sherlock Holmes and the pharaoh’s curse. Monte Carlo was just for fun, and the Reichenbach Falls seemed like a good place to kill off Holmes. 

Wait! Did I say that? 

Did I do that?

A little bit about Holmes, a little bit about Tut, a little bit about me. Catch the whole piece at Fresh Fiction.

Behind the book with Crimespree Mag

 

Where I blame it all on Doyle:

"There wasn’t supposed to be a third book. I mean, a second Sherlock Holmes book made sense, because I had already written it, lo these many years ago, as a screenplay. So my second book actually inspired my first one. that was alright. That was cool."

Read it all at Crimespree Mag.

Launch Day

 

Step inside ...if you dare

The tomb is now open.

Sherlock Holmes comes face to face with the boy king Tutankhamun and his curse in

The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.

Available today on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

Cover Reveal: The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart

 

     Okay…here it is, the cover reveal for The Strange Case of the Pharaoh’s Heart. 

Sherlock Holmes travels to Egypt to take on the curse of Tutankhamun, along with the indefatigable Dr. Watson and the mysterious medium Estelle Roberts. 

Releasing March 19th from Seventh Street Books. Available for pre-order Amazon and a host of other places now.

Cover by the inimitable Jennifer Do.

Oh, and that’s an Egyptian scarab on the cover, not a flying cockroach.

That’s my story anyway. 

Euphemisms

  

 

Right now The Strange Case of the Pharaoh’s Heart is with my editor. Normally I don’t change anything in a draft while my editor is going through it. But lately I’ve been waking up at three in the morning with urgent, miniscule changes to this one. For instance the other night I immediately had to change the word “syphilis” to “the French complaint.”

Why did the question of syphilis even come up in a Sherlock Holmes tale? Oh, that’s simple. It explains Watson’s familiarity with sunglasses in 1924.

Review: The House of Silk

 The House of Silk is a bright red herring. It’s misdirection. If you’ve read Anthony
Horowitz (and I’ve only dipped a toe in that deep lake), you know that misdirection is his specialty. What’s safe to tell you? It’s a Sherlock Holmes tale, pre-Reichenbach Falls, and it starts out with a simple little mystery that snowballs (thanks to a murder that wounds Holmes to the core) into a giant conspiracy which lands Holmes in the mulligatawny so badly that even God (for God, read: Mycroft Holmes) cannot help him. Watson and Lestrade can’t help him. It’s so bad that even his mortal enemy tries to help him. 

   He gets out of the frying pan (through a fine bit of misdirection—and goes right back into the fire. We rarely see Holmes take such foolhardy risks as he does in this tale, but we have seen it when his dander is truly up, and it often places him on the wrong side of the law. And we rarely see him place Watson in such peril, but Watson is always faithful, even in the teeth of a trap.

     It's not a perfect tale. Giant conspiracies have a way of living another day. And there’s a wholly unnecessary cameo by a favorite villain (I have a feeling it’s a setup for a sequel.) But when the giant herring is finally landed, there’s an extremely satisfying ending to the minnow mystery we began with. The hand is quicker than the eye. An indispensable addition to your Holmes collection. 

     (Did I give away a shred of the plot? No? Good.)

Review: The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols

 Before we are very far into The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols we learn that
the protocols in question are the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And if you know that name, you’ll know from the outset that this is the tale of one of Holmes’s failures. You’ll know that Holmes could not possibly have won this fight. You’ll perhaps question whether it’s a completely Quixotic mission that he and Watson are embarked on. But you won’t question their desperate need to attempt the impossible.

     The story begins rather Jason Bourne-like. A British secret agent is found drowned, with a terrible document in her possession, which purports to be a plot by a cabal of Jews to take over the world. Holmes is tasked by brother Mycroft to find out whether it’s truth or fiction. Needless to say, they’re soon satisfied on that score. But Holmes wants to take things further, to trace the lie back to its source, to expose the perpetrators, to remove its potency forever. 

    This will involve our heroes in a dangerous journey to the heart of tsarist Russia, to the site of a deadly pogrom, dogged at every step by Russian secret police who will stop at nothing to protect the source of the protocols from exposure. And the journey back will prove eve more dangerous than the journey there. Journey with Holmes and Watson (and a lovely femme fatale) across Europe on the fabulous Orient Express, by milk train and hayrick and in coffins, tilting with windmills all the way. 

     If you’re familiar with the Protocols, you’ll want to read this. If you’re not, you must read this one.

One hundred years ago

 

"

"

Coming Soon to an ear near you

 

Okay, I can finally announce that the audiobook version of The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle is "coming soon"

--"soon" meaning in September.

From Tantor Media.

Also, Eliza Doolittle Day is May 20. Mark your calendars!

King Tut and the Bugatti

 And then again, some facts in historical mystery are simply a matter of grinding it out. For instance, when you need a car to get your heroes from Luxor to Cairo as quickly as possible. The train simply won't do. This happens in The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.

First of all, you should realize that without the car, Tutankhamun might never have been discovered. Lord Carnarvon, the sponsor of the dig, was mad for cars early on. The faster the better.

And in 1903, he had the dubious distinction of being in the world's first car crash. 

Lord Carnrvon

A bad crash, with a crushed skull and a broken jaw, and lacerated lungs, which left him prone to severe lung infections. Doctors recommended he spend his winters in a dry climate--say, Egypt? He fell in love with the place, fell in love with Egyptology, and finally decided to get into the tomb-digging business. He hired a fellow named Howard Carter, and the rest as they say, is history.

But back to my problem. Where to get a car? Our heroes came to Luxor aboard a dahabeah (another whole story). Well, it's true, I could make up any car owned by anybody. I wouldn't even have to name the kind of car. But historical fiction is made up of these thousand details which anchor our stories in reality, and create a bond of trust between writer and reader.

So I decided to make the car Lord Carnarvon's car, left garaged in a tomb (which is where they did keep them) when he went to Cairo and died. So what kind of car would Lord Carnarvon have driven?

This was actually easy to uncover, since Carnarvon was so well known for his love of cars (and horses and yachts). Of course, I could have gone with a Ford, since he had provided one for the dig, but I, wanted a fast car. Before the end of his life, Carnarvon was into Bugattis (although he had just purchased a Bentley, which he never got the chance to take home.)

Bugatti. That's just brimming with sexy. (Although to tell you the truth, I know zero about cars and couldn't tell a Bugatti from a VW Bug.) A Bugatti would do.

But now I needed a Bugatti made before 1923, when Carnarvon died,

And I needed a four-seater, which could carry five in a pinch.

And fast. Faster than a train, which I already knew made the trip from Luxor to Cairo in about ten hours.

Which is about how long it took me to find my Bugatti. (And I get down on my knees and praise the internet every day.) I looked at a lot of Bugattis. Most were two-seaters. Some, for racing purposes held only one. I found a few that might be four-seaters, but I couldn't be sure from the pictures. And while the specs told me what horsepower they were and how many cylinders they had, not a single one mentioned the number of seats.

So as the sun was rising, I found it. The 1923 Bugatti Type 23 Torpedo. Lots of pictures, including one of the back seat.

Sold. That is, if I could just find out--yes! Top speed 62mph. And since my driver is a professional racer, I'm going to posit that she can make it to Cairo in under seven hours.

Now I just have to decide whether it gets them all the way there or breaks down in the desert. Which would mean I'd have to get under the hood of the thing. 

Um... I'm thinking they make it.

A Master of Disguise

 

My thoughts on why Sherlock Holmes lives a life of disguises, first presented in Crime Thriller Hound.:

There are two kinds of actors. One acts to reveal himself. The other acts to hide himself. The first has no protection from the world. She is all blood and bone and sinew and nerve, like an illustration from Grey’s Anatomy. She is always herself, on full view for the world to witness.

​

The second is all armor, though the armor is constructed of quicksilver. We never get a glimpse of him. He is the hero with a thousand faces, a chameleon.

​

It’s a well-known fact that Sherlock Holmes was a master of disguise, using his talent for transformation in some fifteen stories in the canon, from a sailor to a priest to an old woman, often delighting in showing off his talents by fooling Watson, who knows his face better than any man, having captured it in print in its every mood. Indeed, some, such as Captain Basil in The Adventure of Black Peter, seem to be regular characters with shadowy lives of their own. It has been conjectured that he must have had an early career on the stage. Watson at one point even bemoans when he opted to become a consulting detective—“The stage lost a fine actor," he says 

in A Scandal in Bohemia.

​

Well, if we had to choose what kind of actor he is, I think all hands would go up for the latter, the concealing kind. Sherlock Holmes gives nothing away. His heart, his history, even his very thought processes are meagerly doled out to even his closest friend, John Watson. He’s more than ready to give credit for his work to Scotland Yard bumblers, to efface himself from the record books. He would have vastly preferred Watson’s accounts of his adventures to be pared down to scientific case notes, to let himself be equal to x. And the only woman he shows any warmth for at all is an actress who bests him by means of a disguise, while he never socialises with his own (even more unsociable) brother.

​

But where does his fascination with disguise come from? His need to erase himself? Does Sherlock Holmes hate Sherlock Holmes, and if so, why?

​

For the answer, or at least a conjecture, I think we have to delve into Holmes’s past, and we have little enough to go on there. We know that his father was a country squire, settled in his ways, yet he chose a French woman, from a family of prominent painters, as his wife. It’s an odd match.

​

Perhaps she brought money to the estate?  The Vernets were certainly wealthy. Or perhaps it was a second marriage for Mr. Holmes, and he needed a new mother for his children from his first.  For her part, she could not be choosy at her age.

​

Because since we know her family, we can find her in the family genealogy. She was almost certainly Louise Vernet-LeComte, whose mother Camille was the sister of Horace Vernet. She would have been about thirty-two when she gave birth to Mycroft, thirty-nine when Sherlock was born. Both her age and the gap between births suggest stillbirths in between, or at least children who did not live to majority. It’s entirely possible that she died giving birth to Sherlock.  If not, she would likely have been a very protective mother to her youngest son. But if so, his father, and even Mycroft, might have blamed her death on him. There’s reason to want to hide, estranged from his very birth from his family, carrying guilt as his original sin.

​

And if he came from a family of country squires, where is the family seat? Neither Sherlock nor Mycroft seem to have inherited a country estate. Did his father lose it, either through drink or mismanagement? Or is there an older brother, whom they are so estranged from that neither ever lets his name pass their lips?

 

We know Holmes did not finish university. Could his father have died without leaving him a penny to his name, forcing him to “live by his wits?”

​

Or could it be that Mr. Holmes was not his father at all, that Louise was sent back to live with her brother Emil when she could produce no more children after Mycroft, and she had an affair? The clue to Sherlock’s actual father may then be hiding in plain sight.  After Moriarty’s death he seems to have undergone some crisis of the soul,  traveling from one guru to another, ostensibly in the guise of a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson. Perhaps his father was a Norwegian explorer named Siger, and his wanderings after the death of Moriarty were actually for the purpose of seeking him out? Or (and this I will admit is stretching it to the limit) perhaps his father was George Sigerson, Irish neurologist, politician and poet, who visited France often in his youth. He would have been thirty-two at the time Sherlock was born. Illegitimate birth still held the stain of bastardy in the 19th century. That would have been reason enough for Holmes to plant a palisade around himself.

​

Indeed, we have to ask ourselves why he ever abandoned the stage to create his own unique profession. I think it’s because there is a third type of actor. Most actors are self-absorbed. They shouldn’t be censured for it. It’s actually a necessary trait when one’s only instrument is oneself. But some actors are concerned more with the play than their part. They cannot see the tree for the forest. Because they are so caught up in the mise en scene, on every part, they cannot focus on themselves. Such actors make excellent directors.

I think Sherlock Holmes was so concerned with hiding his secrets that he made a profession of uncovering the secrets of others.  Even his clients must unmask themselves before Holmes will take them on, even if you’re the King of Bohemia. Holmes became a pioneer semiotician, carefully brushing away his own footprints in the snow.

​

Perhaps we should just respect Sherlock’s privacy.  But let’s look at this another way: he chooses Watson as his friend and foil precisely because of his lack of artifice. Yet it is Watson who exposes him, over and over. I think that too is a deliberate  choice on Sherlock’s part, that he can only reveal himself when translated into third person. In that case, all this conjecture makes fertile soil for more stories, more encores.

​

He’s amassed hundreds of encores. Let’s just give him a thundering ovation.

Holmes's artistic ancestry/Crimereads

 

My  speculations on Sherlock Holmes's Vernet ancestry, first published in Crime Reads:

Backstory. Probably Freud fault. 
Wanting to know whether we were in love

 with our mothers or had killed our fathers.

That is to say, that every character—every modern character—needs a backstory, according to today’s practice, all worked out by a writer (or an actor), even if the details of the backstory are never actually revealed to the audience. Adds depth, don’t you know? It didn’t use to be the case. We’re not concerned with Hamlet’s childhood, or Faust’s, or Quixote’s. And none of them felt the need for 23and me.

But those days are gone. Now we want to know a character from the inside out. Now we even want (thanks, Superman) an origin story. And writers like Barret-Gould and Vincent Starrett have been accommodating, to a point. But I’ve don’t think they’ve dug enough into the only clue that Doyle gives us, in his famous introduction to Mycroft Holmes, The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter:
“My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”

Now why Doyle decided to hook his fictional character up with the very real Vernets, the family of distinguished French artists, is a matter for conjecture. It’s been hazarded that it was because he came himself from a family of (far less distinguished) English artists. Nor do we know how the Vernets felt about having Holmes foisted on their bloodline (although of course nowadays the Vernets would largely be forgotten without the Holmes connection—fame is fleeting).

Nevertheless, at the time the Vernets were a wildly popular tribe of painters, three generations, connected by marriage to a whole host of other successful French artists. And since there were three generations, Claude, Carl, and Horace, there is some ambiguity as to exactly which Vernet is meant. Since Horace and Carl both feature (in paintings) the aquiline nose and piercing eyes that Holmes also boasts, that doesn’t clear up the question.

But in truth, it can only mean Horace, because only Horace, the youngest, fits into our timeline. Born in 1789 (in the Louvre, where both his father and grandfather had apartments), he was a childhood prodigy and by the age of 13 he was already receiving orders for his work. He painted with lightning speed and his brush was likened to a machine. He also had a phenomenal eye for detail and a prodigious memory. He would have made, dare I say it? an excellent detective.

He had only one sister, Camille, which makes that simpler for us. She married the painter Hippolyte Lecomte, who made his mark, like Vernet, mainly with paintings of battles, though he certainly wasn’t lauded like Vernet, who was a recipient of the Legion of Honor.

His son in turn was the famous Orientalist painter, Emile LeComte, and he had two daughters. The first, Fanny LeComte, born 1809, is also listed in the family genealogy as a painter. Unfortunately, I was able to find no further information on her. It would be fascinating to trace her career in what was still largely a men’s-only club at the time.

This brings us at last to Louise, Lecomte’s second daughter, born in 1815. This lady, of whom nothing more is known, I think must have given birth to Mycroft Holmes in 1847, at the age of thirty-two—remarkably old at the time for a first child. Could she have had earlier miscarriages? Or could she have been Siger Holmes’s second wife? (In which case the Holmes brothers may have had unmentioned half-brothers or sisters, wholly bereft of that artistic spark which Sherlock and Mycroft share.) Or perhaps she was pursuing her own career as a painter up until the point she met her future husband? We can only speculate. But speculating is what historical fiction writers absolutely adore.

One may wonder how this staid son of squires made a match with this lively French mamselle so steeped in the art world? Perhaps he was taken with her beauty. We have, alas, no portraits of her, but we do have one of her aunt, also a Louise, painted by her father Horace, and she was quite a beauty. And perhaps for her part she might have been anxious  to get away from her brother, Emil, whom she might have been employed as housekeeper to, since he seems never to have married.

How did she and the country squire meet? Probably in France. Perhaps neat La Londe les Maures, near the Riviera, where Horace Vernet had once had a castle built. Perhaps Siger was a younger son, who had to make his way as a wine merchant. Certainly Sherlock was an aficionado of fine wines, and the Montpelier area nearby, which seems to have held some significance for Holmes,  was well-known for wine-growing.

At any rate, she would have been thirty-nine, then, when Sherlock was born in the dead of winter. Could she have died in childbirth? Very possibly. Would Siger have blamed her death on Sherlock? Also all too likely. This would explain why he never mentions his parents. It might explain too why he had to live by his wits, inheriting nothing from his father, and why he and Mycroft are more than somewhat distant.

Or—could it be that that Sherlock and Mycroft had different fathers? But then who—

Okay, I won’t open that can of worms. Leave Sherlock Holmes some mystery. In the meantime what about Watson’s family history? (I won’t even raise the spectre of his many wives.) Was Moriarty an American? Maybe I should just stop there. 

 

 

Interview with Nerds that Geek/The Dutch Painter

 
NTG: Do you think Sherlock Holmes would have good taste in art? Why / why not?

 

Timothy Miller: Watson claimed that he had dreadful taste in art, but then Watson was something of a Philistine himself. But I think Holmes would have been more apt to analyze art, to try to derive clues from it rather than simply enjoy it. I think he would have been more comfortable with abstract art, Kandinsky, for instance, which would have allowed his mind. to release its grip, the same way that improvisation on the violin did.

For the full interview on The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, visit 

Nerds That Geek.

My 5 favorite art heist films

 You know my new novel, The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, is about the murder of Vincent van Gogh. But it's also about a daring art forgery ring, because I love art heist tales as much as I love Sherlock Holmes.

"The days when you could walk out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa under your arm are over. There are all sorts of safeguards now—electric eyes, pressure sensors, lasers, which in the movies at least, must usually be overcome by dangling the thieves from the ceiling. I love art-heist stories."

For 5 of my favorite heist films, visit:

Fresh Fiction

Noshing on Dutch

Just a little midnight nibble from The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter 

(now available for pre-order).

 One thing Sherlock Holmes knows how to do is wait. But you won't have to much longer.

Now available for pre-order.

Hello again! 

My second novel, The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, is now available for pre-order On Amazon.

Paris, 1890. When Sherlock Holmes finds himself chasing an art dealer through the streets of Paris, he’s certain he’s smoked out one of the principals of a cunning forgery ring responsible for the theft of some of the Louvre’s greatest masterpieces. But for once, Holmes is dead wrong.

He doesn’t know that the dealer, Theo Van Gogh, is rushing to the side of his brother, who lies dying of a gunshot wound in Auvers. He doesn’t know that the dealer’s brother is a penniless misfit artist named Vincent, known to few and mourned by even fewer.

Officialdom pronounces the death a suicide, but a few minutes at the scene convinces Holmes it was murder. And he’s bulldog-determined to discover why a penniless painter who harmed no one had to be killed–and who killed him. Who could profit from Vincent’s death? How is the murder entwined with his own forgery investigation?

Holmes must retrace the last months of Vincent’s life, testing his mettle against men like the brutal Paul Gauguin and the secretive Toulouse-Lautrec, all the while searching for the girl Olympia, whom Vincent named with his dying breath. She can provide the truth, but can anyone provide the proof? From the madhouse of St. Remy to the rooftops of Paris, Holmes hunts a killer—while the killer hunts him.

Another Wafer-thin...

Would you care for just one more
wafer-thin...interview? 

                                                                                           

Then check out my talk with three ladies named Dark, Stormy, and Night. It's mainly about The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle, but I spill the beans on all three books.