Guy Adams - Sherlock Holmes - The Army of Doctor Moreau

My decision to set the action of this book directly after that of the previous volume means that Challenger has yet to have that adventure, hence his scepticism of Professor Lindenbrook’s claim to have found prehistoric animals at the centre of the Earth. Lindenbrook of course comes from Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Another scientist who would go on to find strange things beneath the bedrock of our planet is Abner Perry (though, as with Challenger, that adventure lies ahead of him in the chronology of this book). Perry, through the funding of his friend David Innes, would soon invent the “iron mole” and the pair of them burrow their way to adventure in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core, the first of his series of Pellucidar novels. I make no bones about the fact that my version of Perry is played by Peter Cushing, as per the movie from Amicus Studios released in 1976, the year I was born! Cushing is a hero of mine and the film continues to brighten up any grey day I chose to screen it in.

The final member of our team is not played by Peter Cushing, nor Lionel Jeffries (though he could easily have been) but rather Mark Gatiss who’s performance as Professor Cavor in the 2010 adaptation of The First Men in the Moon (another book by H. G. Wells, of course) pleased this viewer no end.

They were small crimes, a fun nod of the hat to the books and movies that have entertained this silly dreamer for the majority of his life.

Carruthers is also stolen from another book, though this time it’s one of my own so the sentence should be negligible. He appears in my novel The World House and its sequel Restoration and he fitted so well that I couldn’t resist having him close to hand once more.

Inspector George Mann is a distinctly unsubtle nod of the trilby to the writer of the same name. I featured the countryside detective in The Breath of God and decided he may as well return here as, if nothing else, it will make George smile that he finally gets to have some action.

Everybody else is either the product of my imagination or Doyle’s (though I have cheekily referenced a scene from the Basil Rathbone movie, Sherlock Holmes and The Voice of Terror and Peter Cook’s appearance as Watson’s editor in Without A Clue because once you start it is so very difficult to stop).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As always, thanks to everyone at Titan and to all those who have supported these new tales of Baker Street, reviewers, publicists and above all readers. It’s an address we never tire of visiting.

I am supported in everything I do by Debra, the woman who reads it first. Time and again she is forced to read books on subjects she has no interest in. If that interest is piqued by the time she gets halfway in then I know I have done my job. I love her very much indeed and couldn’t write a word without her.

Mother gets the second taste, once a few edits have crept in. If nothing else this makes her think I’m slightly cleverer than I actually am. Which is never a bad position to be in. Again, her support is quite simply invaluable.

Finally, we must thank the dreamers of another age, Doyle, Wells, Verne, Burroughs … writers who looked at the world through a strange lens indeed, cusping a century with some of the bravest and most thrilling stories ever written, stories that stand proud over a hundred years later and mark them as the giants they were.

I am not worthy, but it is to be hoped that the simple act of trying to be continues to bring me closer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guy Adamshas written over twenty books, ranging from novels such as The World House and the Deadbeat series to novelisations of Hammer movies and more books about Sherlock Holmes than you could shake a Calabash pipe at. He is also the writer of the comic series The Engine, working with artist Jimmy Broxton.

www.guyadamsauthor.com

SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE BREATH OF GOD

Guy Adams

A body is found crushed to death in the London snow. There are no footprints anywhere near it. It is almost as if the man was killed by the air itself.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson travel to Scotland to meet with the one person they have been told can help: Aleister Crowley.

As dark powers encircle them, Holmes’ rationalist beliefs begin to be questioned. The unbelievable and unholy are on their trail as they gather a group of the most accomplished occult minds in the country: Doctor John Silence, the so-called “Psychic Doctor”; supernatural investigator Thomas Carnacki; runic expert and demonologist, Julian Karswell …

But will they be enough? As the century draws to a close it seems London is ready to fall and the infernal abyss is growing wide enough to swallow us all.

A brand-new original novel, detailing a thrilling new case for the acclaimed detective Sherlock Holmes.

TITANBOOKS.COM

PROFESSOR MORIARTY

THE HOUND OF THE D’URBERVILLES

Kim Newman

Imagine the twisted evil twins of Holmes and Watson and you have the dangerous duo of Professor James Moriarty—wily, snake-like, fiercely intelligent, terrifyingly unpredictable—and Colonel Sebastian ‘Basher’ Moran—violent, politically incorrect, debauched. Together they run London crime, owning police and criminals alike. When a certain Irene Adler turns up on their doorstep with a proposition, neither man is able to resist.

PRAISE FOR KIM NEWMAN

“Compulsory reading … glorious” Neil Gaiman

“Newman’s prose is a delight”

Time Out

“A

tour de force

which succeeds brilliantly”

The Times

TITANBOOKS.COM

ANNO DRACULA

THE BLOODY RED BARON

Kim Newman

It is 1918 and Dracula is commander-in-chief of the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The war of the great powers in Europe is also a war between the living and the dead.

As ever the Diogenes Club is at the heart of British Intelligence and Charles Beauregard and his protegé Edwin Winthrop go head-to-head with the lethal vampire flying machine that is the Bloody Red Baron...

“… stunning follow-up to his inventive alternate-world fantasy,

Anno Dracula

.”

Publishers Weekly

“Gripping … superbly researched … Newman’s rich novel rises above genre … A superior sequel to

Anno Dracula,

itself a benchmark for vampire fiction.”

Kirkus Reviews

“A delicious mixture of wild invention, scholarship, lateral thinking and sly jokes … Unmissable.”

Guardian

“How could World War I be made even grislier? Add vampires, as Newman does with great skill in this sequel to his

Anno Dracula.” Booklist

TITANBOOKS.COM

Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Dr Moreau

Print edition ISBN: 9780857689337

E-book edition ISBN: 9780857689344

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: July 2012

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Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Guy Adams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Copyright © 2012 by Guy Adams.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.