Sherlock Holmes and the Voice from the Crypt

The famous tin box in the attic of the house at 221B Baker Street—perhaps the best known address in crime literature—is again unlocked by the Great Detective’s loyal companion, Dr. Watson, in this collection of six original tales contrived by Donald Thomas. Crossing historical fact with inventive fiction, Thomas introduces Holmes in these stories to intriguing true-crime cases that captured headlines at the turn of the last century and to real-life clients as illustrious as Oscar Wilde and as infamous as Dr. Crippen, an errant husband condemned to death by hanging for the brutal murder and dismemberment of his wife. Among the other confounding cases are the matter of the Naked Bicyclists, whose nocturnal rides in rural Essex lead to the discovery of some grim secrets buried beneath the blackthorn trees; the file on the Hygienic Husband, in which a bathtub proves to be the crucial clue in rescuing a young woman from a devious bigamist; and the case of the Talking Corpse, wherein horror leaps from the shadows in the Lambeth slums and assumes the shape of one Dr. Thomas Neill Cream—a villain who, in Holmes’s estimation, may surpass even Professor Moriarty in the degree of his human depravity.