Sherlock Holmes - The Monster of the Mere

by Philip Purser-Hallard

Overview

When Watson's holiday in the Lake District takes a sinister twist, he and Holmes must uncover the truth hidden by superstitious locals, folklore and rumours of prehistorical monsters far away from the familiar streets of London...

A serene walking holiday in the Lake District becomes a far more sinister excursion for Dr Watson when disappearances and murders start occurring in the small town of Wermeholt.

Local legends, rumours of large slithering reptiles and spooked palaeontologists have the denizens paranoid and terrified, so it is up to Watson and his inbound companion Sherlock Holmes to uncover the truth and discover what is really lurking in the lake…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789099263
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	06/20/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	295,435
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.78(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Philip Purser-Hallard is the author of the trilogy of urban fantasy thrillers beginning with The Pendragon Protocol, and the editor of a series of anthologies about the City of the Saved. As well as writing various other books and short stories, Phil edits The Black Archive, a series of monographs about individual Doctor Who stories published by Obverse Books.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/13/2023

Purser-Hallard burnishes his reputation as one of the finer Conan Doyle imitators in his superb fourth Holmes outing (after 2022’s Masters of Lies), a clever riff on The Hound of the Baskervilles that sees Holmes and Watson probing rumors of a water monster in England’s Lake District. A walking tour takes Watson to the town of Wermeholt, on the shores of Lake Wermewater, the supposed home of a snakelike creature known as the Hagworm. Locals believe that when the centuries-old Hagworm appears, it heralds the death of a member of the Wermeston family, who own much of the lake’s eastern shore. Soon, Watson encounters a scientific expedition pursuing a different explanation: that the monster is a surviving prehistoric reptile. After someone is found dead from apparent animal wounds, Watson summons Holmes to Wermeholt and the pair set about determining what’s really haunting the lake. Purser-Hallard captures Conan Doyle’s style and characters perfectly, forging a plot with all the pace and atmosphere of a classic horror film. Sherlockians looking for authenticity in their pastiche will hope this author delivers many more. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Superb...Purser-Hallard captures Conan Doyle’s style and characters perfectly, forging a plot with all the pace and atmosphere of a classic horror film. Sherlockians looking for authenticity in their pastiche will hope this author delivers many more. " 
Publishers Weekly Starred Review


"Displays the author’s remarkable facility at conjuring the spirit of Conan Doyle’s originals. Sherlockians and Wildeans alike will embrace Purser-Hallard." 
Publishers Weekly starred review

Praise for the author:

"A very good locked-room puzzle" Morning Star

"One of the cleverest locked room mysteries ever tackled by Sherlock Holmes... John Dickson Carr and Anthony Boucher fans will be gratified at the logical explanation the master rationalist devises. This ranks among the top novel-length Sherlock Holmes pastiches." Publishers Weekly

“The best kept secret in British genre writing”
the British Fantasy Society

“[Purser-Hallard’s] writing is crisp and clever… the cast of characters appealing, interesting and consistent”
the British Fantasy Society on The Pendragon Protocol

From the Publisher

2023-03-11
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson wander into a case that might better have suited Professor Challenger of The Lost World.

A walking tour of the Lake District in 1899 brings Watson to the nothingburger village of Wermeholt, where his old teacher, noted anatomist Prof. Summerlee, has joined forces with paleontologist Prof. James Creavesey on a mission too hush-hush to reveal to an outsider. The plot thickens when Creavesey’s student Henry Gramascene goes missing and curdles when Gramascene’s found mauled and bashed to death, having evidently been attacked while rowing across the Wermewater and dragged himself to collapse in the local cemetery. In the wake of this gruesome discovery, Summerlee and Creavesey acknowledge that they’re investigating signs of the Hagworm, a dinosaur rumored to have somehow survived into the Anthropocene Era. Watson naturally writes to Holmes, though this particular mystery doesn’t exactly seem to be up his alley. Holmes’ investigation throws new light on the connection between Gramascene’s death and legends that the foreign-born wife of Lord William de Wermeston, an ancestor of local aristocrat Lady Ophelia Wermeston, who’s sponsoring Summerlee and Creavesey’s research, turned into a “loathsome worm” and devoured her distinguished husband. But all of Holmes’ insistence that there must be a rational explanation for all these incidents cannot prevent two more violent deaths before he and Watson confront the Hagworm in all its ghoulish glory.

Sherlock Holmes in Jurassic Park. If you think that sounds too outlandish to work, you may be on to something.

Kirkus Reviews