Two mysteries are in­ter­twined in this novel. In the present day, a long-lost diary of Arthur Conan Doyle’s from 1900 has apparently been re­dis­cov­ered, but the finder has been murdered, while in 1900, Doyle and Bram Stoker in­ves­ti­gate the murder of several young women.

The two mysteries are artfully in­ter­twined and the plots move along nicely. I was irritated by the author’s ignorance of Victorian England—"It was a Victorian-era shilling, worth only five pennies in its day" (twelve, dammit, until dec­i­mal­i­sa­tion in 1971)—and weak grasp of ACD’s style.