The West End Horror

The West End Horror is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Nicholas Meyer, published in 1976.

Related Topics:
Sherlock Holmes - Pastiche - Novel - Nicholas Meyer

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The book is written in the form of a false document. It opens with a foreword by Meyer, who states that the manuscript was brought to his attention by a woman with some familial connection to Horace Vernet, also an ancestor of Holmes. The woman had read The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and thought Meyer might be interested. Although damaged by water, the manuscript proved authentic.

Related Topics:
False document - Horace Vernet - The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

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Dr Watson explains in his own preface that he did not publish the story because of the number of well-known persons who would be affected - persons whose identity would be impossible to disguise. Holmes had for a long time refused Watson permission to write the story on these very grounds, but Watson eventually persuaded him by promising to place the manuscript in Holmes' hands, the only condition being that he not destroy it.

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The story does, indeed, involve many well-known people, including George Bernard Shaw who hires Holmes to look into the death of an unpleasant theatre critic; Sir Arthur Sullivan, one of whose dancers at the D'Oyly Carte company was another victim of the murderer; Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Henry Irving and Dr Moore Agar, whose dramatic introduction to Holmes Watson has elsewhere (in one of the stories published under his pseudonym, "Arthur Conan Doyle") said he might some day recount.

Related Topics:
George Bernard Shaw - Sir Arthur Sullivan - D'Oyly Carte - Oscar Wilde - Bram Stoker - Henry Irving - Pseudonym - Arthur Conan Doyle

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