Charles Dodgson & Arthur Conan Doyle

By the English seaside, two literary legends team up to find a young lady who has disappeared Once a playground for the British nobility, by the mid-1880s Brighton has become a haven for middle-class vacationers. Shabbier than it was, and darker around the edges, it is nonetheless a fitting place for a young doctor's honeymoon. But no sooner has Arthur Conan Doyle stepped off the train than he encounters a mystery. A teenage girl has vanished from the railway terminal, and the elderly Reverend Dodgson-better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll-is searching for her. Doyle will do whatever it takes to rescue the missing miss from the clutches of a coastal criminal, even if it means putting his honeymoon in danger. In Sherlock Holmes and Alice in Wonderland, Arthur Conan Doyle and Lewis Carroll created two of Victorian England's most remarkable characters, but neither could ever have imagined the trouble they would find on Brighton Pier.

A sea captain lies dead, the victim of a murder with otherworldly dimensions The reverend Charles Dodgson comes to Portsmouth hoping for rest, relaxation, and a few days' peace in the company of his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and aspiring author of mysteries. But within a minute of their reunion, Doyle is talking about murder. One of his patients, a gout-ridden ex-sailor, has dropped dead in his study, and Doyle is not convinced by the coroner's verdict of natural causes. Besides being the author of Alice in Wonderland, Dodgson is a renowned mathematician, and Doyle begs him to use his deductive brilliance to find the man who snuffed out the old sea dog. When an Indian raja arrives to accuse the dead man of stealing treasures from India, a local mystic volunteers to help unravel the case. Doyle and Dodgson are wary of taking help from a psychic, but they will soon find that it may take more than logic to solve this case.

A vicious newspaperman is murdered, and every scribe in the office is a suspect It is winter in London, and the coal is running short. The chill on Fleet Street is so severe that the men who run the presses for Youth's Companion are too cold to work. Despite the freeze, their editor-the vile Mr. Bassett-will not spare a shilling for coal. He is behind on paying his employees, has been accused of stealing his writers' ideas, and refuses to hire any up-and-coming literary talent, be it Oscar Wilde or Arthur Conan Doyle. It is no surprise when the editor is found murdered. The question is, which of his enemies got to him first? Doyle enlists Charles Dodgson-better known as Lewis Carroll-to look into the murder. When the police try to pin the killing on the slighted Mr. Wilde, it is up to Doyle and Dodgson to clear Wilde's name and find the true killer of the cruelest man on Fleet Street.

At Oxford, a rash of crime puts Dodgson under suspicion of murder. The world of academia is hardly a hotbed of crime. And although scholars at the University of Oxford may debate the assassination of Caesar or the execution of Socrates, a modern criminal has no place within the school's walls. And yet, as the reverend Charles Dodgson is horrified to learn, there is a thief within the college of Christ Church. The wine cellar has been ransacked, the faculty has been robbed, and a female student is being threatened by a blackmailer. It falls to Dodgson - better known as Lewis Carroll - to unmask the thief with the help of his dear friend Arthur Conan Doyle. The campus crimes quickly escalate until the university's hallowed halls are stained with blood. When suspicion of murder falls at Dodgson's feet, it is up to Doyle to clear his friend's name - with the brilliance and style befitting the man who created Sherlock Holmes.