The Baker Street Phantom by Fabrice Bourland

The Baker Street Phantom

Format:	Paperback
Pages:	352
Published:	August 2, 2010
ISBN:	978-1906040284

My Book Review Rating:

Synopsis

It’s the spring of 1932 and Londoners are being terrorised by a series of brutal murders in the English Capital just as the private detective agency of Messrs. Singleton and Trelawney opens its doors in Bloomsbury.

There first client is an extremely worried Lady Arthur Conan Doyle who tells them of mysterious goings on at 221 Baker Street and warns them that mankind is in terrible danger.

The ensuing investigation takes the unlikely heroes into a world of seances and spirits where they are forced to rethink the boundaries between reality and fantasy. The question is of course, can they solve these bloody crimes…?

Why did you decide to read this book?

I was offered an Advanced Reading Copy of this book and as I’ve never read a Crime Fantasy novel before I decided to give it a go

What did you like about this book?

I always say that I like books that take me away from reality, and this one certainly fit the bill. I was captivated from the very first page and soon found myself in the world of spirits and seances, guided by none other than the ghost of Sherlock Holmes himself!

Considering that this book has been translated from French into English I couldn’t fault the translation and I felt like I was reading a classic novel that had been written in that era.

London of the 1930s, with it’s spooky goings on felt like a mysterious and dangerous place, and I was caught up in the tale, with all its twists and turns right until the very last page.

It really is a wonderful book!

I think that this may be the first in a ‘Singleton and Trelawney’ detective series and I will certainly be looking out for any future novels.

Share a quote from the book

“The vague outline of a third shape could be seen in the photograph, between James and me. Despite the precision it soon acquired, it remained vaporous and slightly translucent. It was definitely a man, tall and slender with a pointed, slightly aquiline nose, not bald but with a receding hairline. He was standing upright, behind us, slightly turned to one side, arms crossed, in indoor attire, possibly a dressing gown, and was watching the lens out of the corner of his eye, a pipe hanging from his lips.

‘Good heavens!’ cried James. ‘It’s…’

‘It’s… Sherlock Holmes!’ I muttered.”

About the Author

Fabrice Bourland has worked extensively in the magazine and publishing world and is a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe. The Baker Street Phantom is his first fantasy crime novel.

“My writing is a combination of detective and fantasy fiction. Having said that, I am merely reviving a subgenre of crime fiction that was very popular in the past, that of detectives of “the strange” or “the occult” if you like, of which William Hope Hodgson, Algernon Blackwood or Seabury Quinn were the most celebrated exponents. The subgenre is connected to the origins of detective fiction. We mustn’t forget that the latter genre was created in the 1840s by a certain … Edgar Allan Poe, unquestionably the master of fantasy writing too.

When writing The Baker Street Phantom I used Victorian maps of London which I pinned up all around my desk. From the moment I woke up in the morning I immersed myself in Whitechapel, Limehouse or Marylebone. I didn’t want to go on a recce to London. Modern London is of little interest to me. What I wanted to know about was the London of the imagination, etched indelibly on the collective unconscious of readers, the London of the 1880′s of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Mr Hyde and others …”

Extract from an interview published by fantasienet.com