The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, #1)

by Vaughn Entwistle

Arthur Conan Doyle has just killed off Sherlock Holmes in "The Final Problem," and he immediately becomes one of the most hated men in London. So when he is contacted by a medium "of some renown" and asked to investigate a murder, he jumps at the chance to get out of the city. The only thing is that the murder hasn't happened yet--the medium, one Hope Thraxton, has foreseen that her death will occur at the third seance of a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research at her manor house in the English countryside.

Along for the ride is Conan Doyle's good friend Oscar Wilde, and together they work to narrow down the list of suspects, which includes a mysterious foreign Count, a levitating magician, and an irritable old woman with a "familiar." Meanwhile, Conan Doyle is enchanted by the plight of the capricious Hope Thraxton, who may or may not have a more complicated back-story than it first appears. As Conan Doyle and Wilde participate in seances and consider the possible motives of the assembled group, the clock ticks ever closer to Hope's murder, in The Revenant of Thraxton Hall by Vaughn Entwistle.

• ISBN10: 1250035007
• ISBN13: 9781250035004
• Publish Date: 25 March 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 30 June 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 322
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde alongside a European Count, a medium with pophyria, Daniel Dunglas Home and several other members of the Society for Psychical Research attend a seance weekend at Thraxton Hall, which is apparently haunted and Lady Hope Thraxton has had a vision that she will die.  Doyle wants to leave London to escape his readers who currently hate him because he killed off Holmes and takes the opportunity to escape London and his dying wife and embroil himself in a mystery.  Then things take a twist with a murder, and it's not who everyone expects.
 
Wilde was the more interesting character but a little overblown.  It wasn't a bad read but it felt like the story had to fit the characters used rather being a good plot in itself and might have been better if the author had made his own characters up.  
 
Falls into Gothic, Country House Mystery, supernatural, ghosts, Haunted Houses, Amateur Sleuth and there's a locked room mystery also.  I'm going to use Country House Mystery.

[MurderByDeath]

I'm going to use one of my dad's favourite sayings and call this one fair to middling.    On the surface it should have been a guaranteed-to-please-me read: I'm intrigued by Wilde, Conan Doyle is one of only a couple of people I'd go back in time to meet, and the it's a ghost story set on the moors.  In spite of all of this, I remained nothing but an indifferent observer from start to finish; I failed to connect with Wilde or Doyle, and the ghosts failed to thrill.  Additionally, the twisty part of the plot was something I saw coming from the start, although how Doyle got there at the end was so twisty and convoluted, I'm still not sure I get how he did it.   He did totally pull one over on me regarding the Count though; did not see that one coming.   This is the first of a series, but I doubt I'll be searching out the second one.