One major fictional leap has been taken in the Arthur Conan Doyle story line, however: A group of angry suffragists did not place a letter bomb in Conan Doyle’s mail in 1900. They did so in 1911. The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign: 1866-1928, by Harold L. Smith, has been a fantastic resource on the subject of the NUWSS and its leader, Millicent Fawcett.

The portrayal of Bram Stoker in this novel is also as accurate as possible and is based chiefly on Bram Stoker and the Man Who Was Dracula, a brilliant biography written by Barbara Belford. Though Oscar Wilde is not quite a character in The Sherlockian, his presence looms large over both Conan Doyle and Stoker. Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellmann, remains the final word on Wilde biographies, as it has been for over twenty years.

All locations featured in this novel are real. If you can manage it, I highly recommend a trip to Switzerland to see the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Take a stroll between the chairs, lamps, and gasogenes from Arthur Conan Doyle’s old study. Who knows what you’ll find there?

GPM

2010

Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks-

To the great friends who read early drafts of this work and whose editorial insights are worth far more to me than any lost diary: Alice Boone, Kate Cronin-Furman, Amanda Taub, Rebecca White, Janet Silver, Richard Siegler, Helen Estabrook, Leslie Klinger, Sara McPherson, and Johnathan McClain.

To the professionals-the very best in the business-who through their creativity and acumen turned this book into something far grander than I could ever have imagined: Jennifer Joel, Niki Castle, Jonathan Karp, Colin Shepherd, Cary Goldstein, Maureen Sugden, Dorothea Halliday, Tom Drumm, Vanessa Joyce, and Max Grossman.

To the loved ones who made sure that I kept writing when I was awfully convinced that I would stop: Lily Binns, Ann Schuster, Avinash Karnani, Matt Wallaert, Tony O’Rourke, Christine Varnado, and the Plaid Shadow.

To my family. All of you.

And an extra special thank-you to Ben Epstein, who is the best writer I know and the reason I started writing fiction in the first place.

About the Author

GRAHAM MOORE is a twenty-eight-year-old graduate of Columbia University, with a degree in religious history. He lives in Los Angeles.