A young Sherlock Holmes crosses the Atlantic to solve a trio of craven killings in the post-Civil War South.
A not-yet-famous Sherlock Holmes is on assignment in Rome in 1879 when he encounters a former schoolmate in need of assistance. The Reverend Simon Peter Grosjean, S. J., is troubled by the deaths of the three Tarleton brothers, young Southern gentlemen who were shot in the back at close range and in quick succession during the Battle of Gettysburg. Intrigued by what are clearly no ordinary battlefield casualties, the incomparable sleuth sets sail for America with Father Grosjean.
Arriving in the Southlands, their investigation leads them through the Georgia backwoods—hotbed of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan—and into the highest strata of Atlanta society. But the murders of three Southern siblings are not the only crimes hidden among the cotton fields and peach trees, as Holmes and Grosjean’s sleuthing soon uncovers a plot that threatens the very existence of a recently reunited United States.
Set in the years prior to the famed detective’s partnership with Dr. John Watson, The Tarleton Murders is a captivating mystery that every Sherlock Holmes fan will adore. Featuring characters both fictional and real—including George Bernard Shaw, Scarlett O’Hara, and the forebears of Paul McCartney and Martin Luther King—and revealing the surprising origins of Professor Moriarity and Uncle Remus—it is a corking good literary puzzler that would make Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proud.
