Posted in: Comics, Digital | Tagged: ebook, kindle, sherlock holmes, year one

Scott Beatty Writes Ebook Based On His Sherlock Holmes Comic

After the success of their Seal Team Six ebooks by Chuck Dixon, Dynamite continue their digital prose publications by comic book writers with a new Sherlock Holmes Year One story written by Scott Beatty, based on his Sherlock comic book work for Dynamite, for the Kindle.

Here's the first chapter…

SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE TWELVE CAESARS

Scott Beatty

BOOK I: A Poison Prelude

The Butlers Did It

1

I HATE mysteries.

And I need no second opinion as a diagnostician to pronounce that this lad seated before us is consumed by conundrums as if wracked by a pernicious fever. It is his mania. And soon, I fear, I will be similarly afflicted. Doctor, heal thyself. If only.

But as witness to the troubles and terrors that cast foggy London in an even darker pallor during the latter days of 1881 and the frightful year that followed, I must begin my account at the beginning—not during the scourge of murders—but weeks prior to the troubles and at the scene of a very different crime.

"Nasty bump there, lad," said Chief Inspector William Bratton. "Lucky for you that the constabulary retains a physician."

"Who better?" he replied, "than an expert witness to the human condition."

And with that this taciturn young man resumed his contemplative state, sitting cocooned within his sodden clothes upon the police wagon's footboard. He was chilled to the bone, his trembling lips purpling from hypothermia. An angry bruise bloomed on his high cheekbone, just beneath his left eye. Certainly, the fall did him no more harm than the trouncing he suffered before it. Yet he did not complain, but merely watched the proceedings as Inspector Bratton and the uniformed policemen made their inquiries to the stumbling and slurring guests departing Wallingford Keep, a fortress fit for its owners, Lord and Lady Somerset.

Wallingford's walled grounds, just outside of London's city sprawl, as well as its high parapets, provided the Somersets relative safety and security from without. But is that not the function of a castle? And of course, what is a castle without a moat? Unfortunately, the Somersets did not reckon on, nor recognize, the evil that festered within their castle keep.

"You smell like you crawled from the sewer," said Bratton, thumbing a spot of slimy algae smudged upon the lad's scraped chin.

"To my eternal gratitude, the still waters of that moat run fairly deep," said the lad, humorless.

Bratton chortled but slightly at the remark and called to me.

"Doctor Watson! A moment of your time?"

And with those words, our orbits came careening into the path of one another, the Doctor and the Young Detective, soon never one without the other.

Damn him eternally.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!