Murder Rooms by David Pirie
While a young medical student at Edinburgh Arthur Conan Doyle famously studied under the remarkable Dr Joseph Bell, who was a pioneer in criminal investigation. Cream chronicles their most frightening and disturbing case, the encounter with the man who was later presented in expurgated form as Moriarty. Beginning with a series of bizarre and outlandish assaults on women in the brothels of Edinburgh, the story moves to the medical facility of the city's university, which is itself being disrupted by the violent struggle for women's educational rights. Here Doyle meets a fellow student, young Elizabeth Scott, who has many enemies, among them a crazed misogynist student called Crawford and the smiling hypocritical patron of the university, Henry Carlisle. Yet slowly Bell begins to realise that the increasingly freakish crimes they are investigating reflect an entirely new and terrifying kind of criminal who is not susceptible to the old methods. Cream takes from the evil heart of old Edinburgh into what Bell calls their 'fight against the future' and to London itself, where Doyle again faces his nemesis with terrifying results.
Arthur Conan Doyle is the narrator of this excellent crime novel which blends fact with fiction and opens in the late 1870s with the young Doyle studying medicine at Edinburgh UniversityHis mentor is the famous Dr Joseph Bell, who Pirie makes a Sherlock Holmes character, and his adversary against whom he is pitted in two rousing adventures is a prototype Moriarty. It would be unfair to give the game away but Doyle and Bell find themselves alone on the track of a crazed serial killer who strikes first in Edinburgh and then in London. This evocative, superbly crafted mystery thriller paints a striking picture of Victorian mores and the tight and imaginative plot is excitingly developed in a strong narrative that demands (and deserves) to be devoured at a single sitting.
David Pirie was a journalist and film critic before he became a screenwriter. Just a few of his numerous credits are the BAFTA nominated adaptation for the BBC of The Woman in White and his collaboration with Lars Von Trier on the script of the Oscar nominated film Breaking the Waves. David Pirie lives in Somerset.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780712670999 |
| ISBN 10 | 0712670998 |
| Title | Murder Rooms |
| Author | David Pirie |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Cornerstone |
| Year published | 2002-10-03 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |