Sherlock Holmes - The West End Horror

Sherlock Holmes - The West End Horror
By Nicholas Meyer

March, 1895. London. A month of singular occurrences in the West End. First there was the bizarre murder of theatre critic Jonathan McCarthy; the police were baffled. Then came the lawsuit against the Marquess of Queensberry for libel; the public was scandalized. And what of the ingenue at the Savoy, discovered with her throat slashed? Or the police surgeon who disappeared taking with him two corpses from the mortuary?
Some of the theatre district's most fashionable and creative luminaries (as well as a number of more marginal participants) were involved or affected by these events: a penniless stage critic and writer named Bernard Shaw; Ellen Terry, the gifted actress and the loveliest woman in London; Gilbert and Sullivan; a suspicious box office clerk named Bram Stoker; an aging matinee idol, Henry Irving; an unscrupulous publisher calling himself Frank Harris; and a controversial wit by the name of Oscar Wilde.
Scotland Yard is mystified by what appear to be unrelated cases, but to Holmes the matter is elementary: a maniac is on the loose.