The Baskerville Legacy: A Confession

When a young journalist, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, meets his writer hero Arthur Conan Doyle on a troop ship coming back from South Africa, he is delighted - especially when the creator of Sherlock Holmes suggests they collaborate on a 'real creeper' of a story.

“A period-perfect exploration of ambition and resentment, ideal for a misty autumn night by the fireside”

Financial Times
4/5 stars... A thrilling novella... Doyle himself becomes not a villain but a dark character bedevilled by a complex private life and his mania for spiritualism... A rip-roaring addition to the extended library of all things Holmes. Metro
Engrossing... an eerie, pitch-perfect gothic tale, but it is also more than just a piece of literary archeology, probing questions of authorial ownership and fate and language in an atmospheric tour de force. Catholic Herald
O'Connell infuses real events and people with fiction to make this clever, atmospheric and elegant chiller. The Times

John O'Connell worked for several years at the London listings magazine Time Out, where he was Books Editor. He now writes, mostly about books, for The Times, The Guardian, New Statesman and The National. He is the author of I Told You I Was Ill: Adventures in Hypochondria (Short Books, 2005) and The Midlife Manual (Short Books, 2010). He is 37 and lives in south London with his wife and two children.

'It's a curious business, the relationship between a creator and his creations. Brutal, too. Of course,' Doyle's tone hardened, 'Holmes had to be retired. He was distracting me from better things.' I seized on this. 'So Holmes is retired? He's not . not dead?' Doyle roared with laughter. 'I like you, Robinson. You remind me of myself when I was younger. But I won't be drawn on that. Goodness, no.' When a young journalist, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, meets his writer hero Arthur Conan Doyle on a troop ship coming back from South Africa, he is delighted - especially when the creator of Sherlock Holmes suggests they collaborate on 'real creep' of a story. A research trip to deepest Dartmoor cements their friendship as they start work on what will become one of the world's most famous tales, The Hound of the Baskervilles. But the experience will prove traumatic for both of them, and when the result of their labour - Sherlock's comeback vehicle - is finally published, it will be credited to one author alone. Based on real events, The Baskerville Legacy is a creeper in its own right: a thrilling exploration of friendship and rivalry, love and lust, ambition and the limits of talent. It takes us from the clattering heart of Edwardian London to the eerie stillness of ancient West Country moorland, where a treacherous mire might swallow a man in seconds .

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