Bell & Doyle 02 - The Night Calls

✍ Scribed by Pirie, David

• Book ID: 108618384
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 210 KB
• Series: Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Joseph Bell 2
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0312291043

✦ Synopsis

As a young medical student, Arthur Conan Doyle-the creator of Sherlock Holmes-studied under one of the pioneers in forensic medicine, Dr. Joseph Bell. While details of Doyles actual relationship with the Doctor remain shrouded in mystery, author David Pirie has created an engrossing series that pairs the two as partners in criminal investigations in the dark underworlds of Victorian Edinburgh.

The Night Calls chronicles their most frightening and disturbing case, the encounter with the man who prefigures Holmes archnemesis Moriarty. A series of bizarre and outlandish assaults on women in the brothels of Edinburgh has caught the attention of Bell, who calls on Doyle to assist in the investigation. At the same time, however, theres a violent struggle for women's educational rights taking place at the universitys medical school where Doyle is a student. There he meets young Elsbeth Scott, a fellow student with an unfortunate list of enemies, among them a crazed misogynist student name Crawford, and the smiling hypocritical patron of the university, Henry Carlisle.

Bell slowly begins to realize that the increasingly freakish crimes indicate a heretofore unknown and terrifying kind of criminal, one who is not susceptible to the Doctors old methods. The Night Calls takes them from the evil heart of old Edinburgh into what Bell calls their fight against the future and to London itself, where Doyle again faces a villain with terrifying results.

Amazon.com Review

Inspired by the discovery that Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle attended medical school in Scotland with one of the 19th century's most notorious serial killers, David Pirie's The Night Calls reels out a grim but engrossing tale that suggests a model for Holmes's foremost adversary, Professor James Moriarty.

A series of bizarre assaults on women in the brothels of 1878 Edinburgh draws the attention of Dr. Joseph Bell, a surgeon, charismatic teacher, and forensic expert who periodically applies his deductive skills to solving crimes. Together with a young Conan Doyle, his "trusted clerk and pupil," Bell follows the trail of an elusive attacker who leads them on crepuscular chases through gloomy Victorian streets and to a blood-filled room where the puzzle of his motive becomes deeper. However, Conan Doyle is occupied with other matters, as well. He's fast developing a fondness for fellow student Elsbeth Scott, whose interest in promoting educational rights for women has made her many enemies, and whose sister, the wife of a hypocritical philanthropist, grows sicker by the day--either as a result of disease or deviousness. The future author is disturbed, too, by his father's deteriorating mental condition. Assisting Bell offers Conan Doyle some release from worry--at least until their controlling quarry becomes a threat to Miss Scott. Pirie's plot only gains more perplexity and darkness as its action shifts to London, forcing the logical Bell and his impetuous amanuensis to contend with opium fiends, disappearing corpses, a severed head with "horrifying power," and continuing taunts by a murderer who believes that "evil is freedom."

While British author Pirie's previous Bell-Conan Doyle novel, The Patient's Eyes, was more of a whodunit, liberally employing Sherlockian investigative techniques, the rather more smoothly constructed The Night Calls concentrates equally on drama and the morally incongruent psychology of its principal players. This novel blends fact with fiction in a mesmerizing tale that boasts a frightening, cliffhanger ending. A sequel is planned. --J. Kingston Pierce

From Publishers Weekly

In British author Pirie's second novel to feature a young Arthur Conan Doyle and his real-life mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell, as prototypes for Watson and Holmes, the pair pursue a serial killer stalking 1878 Edinburgh, but the results fall short of the high standard set by last year's The Patient's Eyes. Tormented as before by his family's desperate circumstances caused by his father's descent into dementia, Conan Doyle again finds some relief in a romantic interest, this time a fellow medical student threatened by faculty and staff appalled at the prospect of female doctors. The baffling clues left behind to both engage and taunt the detectives, including carefully constructed piles of coins and a room painted in blood, point to two obvious suspects. Alas, the early unmasking of the real murderer owes less to Bell's tremendous Sherlockian deductive gifts than would be expected. The less-than-compelling remainder of the story climaxes in a cliffhanger that will annoy some readers and leave others breathlessly anticipating the sequel. Hopefully, next time Pirie will present Bell, Doyle and the killer as psychologically complex characters, just as he did in his marvelously twisted whodunit of a debut.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kindle Collection : mystery