Sherlock Holmes: The Ratcliffe Highway Affair

by Mike Hogan

In the second novelette in the series (around 12-15,000 words each), Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson learn of an oracle in East London that predicts the future. What seems harmless at first, in fact hides a dark conspiracy.

'This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghost need apply.'

The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, Arthur Conan Doyle.

Despite Holmes' injunction, clients troubled with vampires, apparitions, mummies and disembodied skulls did mount the seventeen steps at 221B Baker Street and apply to his agency and he was reluctantly obliged to investigate their claims.
In this first series of five novelettes, Holmes and Watson have a light-hearted chance to pit their skills against supposedly unearthly predators, and probe evidence that suggests ghouls and ghosts are behind the macabre, uncanny and eerie happenings in a grimy house in Stepney, on board one of Her Majesty's men o' war in the Thames, at the British Museum, at the Japanese Village Exhibition and at a séance in a genteel villa in West London.
Have ghosts had the temerity to challenge Sherlock Holmes, or can Sherlock Holmes uncover human agencies behind the supernatural?

44 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 15, 2013

About the author

I've lived most of my life in Africa, Asia and the Far East manufacturing handicrafts and teaching. I decided to quit regular work and write. There wasn't really a plan, just an instinct that I could write in different historical and contemporary settings.

I completed a Sherlock Holmes novel trilogy in which Winston Churchill, aged twelve, joins Sherlock and Watson at 221B Baker Street. All are available on Amazon.
My semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, Hamlet and Me is on on Kindle and soon in paperback. A boy learns about life as he moonlights at the Old Vic theatre in London during the rehearsals for the O'Toole Hamlet in 1963.
Two collections of Sherlock Holmes short stories are also on Kindle and paperback, and another novel, Sherlock Holmes - The Scottish Question, are published, and I will make Hamlet and Me and a book set in Ancient Rome in 475 AD available on paperback in 2016.
My comedy on the aftermath of the crazy 2016 US presidential elections on Kindle and in paperback.
Have a look at my blog for other stories.