In the winter of 1888, Reverend Charles Dodgson of Christ Church at Oxford -- better known to the world as author Lewis Carroll -- brings his new found friend Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle to London to introduce him to editors potentially interested in Doyle's writing. Their first stop is the offices of a weekly magazine, Youth's Companion, where they arrive to find the place in an uproar -- the staff is upset, the printers in a rage, and Samuel Bassett,the editor, is busy violently rejecting the work of up-and-coming Irish writer Oscar Wilde. Dr. Doyle fares no better with the foul-tempered, duplicitous, and mean editor -- and the duo depart. Shortly thereafter, in full sight of Dodgson and Doyle, Bassett is murdered outside of the magazine's offices. Due to the heavy snowstorm, neither of them can identify Bassett's attacker, but they are on hand to hear Bassett's final gasp. With the Labor Riots raging in the streets and unrest in the air, the police immediately assume that Wilde, a socialist, is responsible and set about trying to find him. But, believing that Wilde is innocent, Dodgson and Doyle are determined to find out the truth behind the vicious attack. In a quest that takes them from the most prestigious literary and art circles in Victorian London to the lowest dives of ill repute, the unlikely duo seeks to unmask a killer before he strikes again.
Jacket design by Alan D. Dingman
Jacket photograph by Hulton Getty
