The Patient's Eyes
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
While a young medical student at Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle famously studied under the remarkable Dr Joseph Bell. Taking this as a starting point, David Pirie has woven a compelling thriller, which partners Bell and Doyle as pioneers in criminal investigation, exploring the strange underworld of violence and sexual hypocrisy running below the surface of the Victorian era. The Patient's Eyes moves from Edinburgh and the strange circumstances surrounding Doyle's meeting with the remarkable Joseph Bell to Southsea where he begins his first medical practice. There he is puzzled by the symptoms presented by Heather Grace, a sweet young woman whose parents have died tragically several years before. Heather has a strange eye complaint, but is also upset by visions of a phantom cyclist who vanishes as soon as he is followed. This enigma, however, is soon forgotten as Doyle finds himself embroiled in more threatening events - including the murder of a rich Spanish businessman - events that call for the intervention of the eminent Dr Bell. But despite coming to Doyle's aid, perversely Dr Bell considers the murder of Senor Garcia a rather unimportant diversion from the far more sinister matter, which has brought him south: the matter of the patient's eyes and the solitary cyclist...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This brilliant debut mystery from British screenwriter Pirie offers a novel twist on the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, with Doyle as the Watsonian narrator relating the exploits of Dr. Joseph Bell, his real-life mentor and model for the fictional detective. Young Dr. Doyle, trying to make a fresh start after a tragic loss, finds himself enmeshed in the affairs of a patient with unusual eyes, Miss Heather Grace. An heiress who survived the attack of a lunatic who slaughtered her parents, Miss Grace is now terrorized by a nightmarish figure who follows her as she cycles to and from her new home. The plot borrows elements from several Holmes stories ("The Speckled Band," "The Solitary Cyclist" and "Wisteria Lodge"), which ostensibly are merely "fictionalized" versions of the real puzzle Bell and Doyle tackle. Doyle's falling in love with his patient complicates his and Bell's probe into several murders. The suspects include the young woman's intimidating uncle, who maintains a large collection of poisonous creatures, her perpetually smiling fianc and an unscrupulous doctor. The author masterfully manufactures suspense, and several passages are truly spine-chilling. Doyle, a painfully human and sympathetic figure whose vulnerabilities help drive the action, and Bell, a very plausible Holmes substitute, are well-matched by their subtle and cunning antagonist. An unsettling solution makes a perfectly appropriate ending for this hard-to-put-down and richly atmospheric thriller.
