The first Doyle and Mason short story, A Disappearance in Baker Street, is on promotion today and tomorrow on Kindle so I thought I would let any potential readers out there know a little bit about the series. The first story is a locked room mystery which starts out in the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London, so you have probably gathered I am playing homage to the Sherlock Holmes stories, though A Disappearance in Baker Street is set in contemporary London.
Ella Doyle is a fictional descendent of Conan Doyle who interrupts her work on a book about the impact of their famous ancestor on her family when she is intrigued by newspaper reports of the apparently impossible disappearance of a young American student from Sherlock Holme's Study in the museum. I can't tell you to much about John Mason without spoilers. He is a security consultant whom Ella meets in the course of her investigations, but he has a mysterious figure in his own right. Artisan Digimedia in Dublin are publishing the next 2 stories in the series over the summer in their new crime short stories imprint - Artisan launch officially later this year, so again I have to avoid spoilers!
The next story Doyle and Mason is The Last Treasure of Queen Hatshepsut, so as you can guess it is inspired by Conan Doyle's famous Egyptian stories, 'Lot No.249' and 'The Ring of Thoth' as well as the Sherlock Holmes series. It also is a crossover story between mystery and fantasy which will be a regular feature of the stories - no wizards or fairies, just a hint of the supernatural.
Artisan plan to bring the stories out at regular intervals until Christmas when a collected edition will be available, which suits me. I think there is huge potential for a revival of the crime short (and longish short) story for digital media and I'm delighted to be part of Artisan Digimedia's pre-launch experiments on how best to deliver exciting content that gives readers the best possible experience. So all feedback gratefully received.
