Sherlock Holmes and the Trial of Joseph Carr

By Orlando Pearson

Giallo - novelette (28 pagine) - A must for all lovers of serious sleuthing.

In Kafka’s The Trial, Josef K (here rendered Joseph Carr) is arrested one morning although he has not done anything wrong, and is put on trial although no charge is ever disclosed to him.

Here Holmes conducts his own investigation into the arrest and subsequent legal process and his solution has uncanny pre-echoes of the early 21st century banking crisis and, in an extraordinary twist, Watson’s text even name-checks some of the people that caused it.

In its new guise The Trial emerges truly as a story of Holmes’s time, our time and for all time.

Orlando Pearson, creator of the well-known Redacted Sherlock Holmes series, commutes into London during the day and communes with the spirits of Baker Street by night.

An international businessman, his interests include classical music, history, literature, current affairs, sport and economics. All these themes find their way into his stories which are being translated into German and Italian.

Mr Pearson is married with two children and lives near Wisteria Lodge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Delos Digital
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9788825419085

Book preview

1

‘Someone must have been slandering Joseph Carr,’ read our visitor, Miss Brusher, from a bulky document she had hauled out of her bag, ‘as one morning, although he had not done anything wrong, he was arrested. The cook of his landlady, Mrs Gruber, who normally brought him his breakfast at eight a.m., did not appear. This had never happened before.’

Miss Brusher had said she had come to consult about her fellow lodger’s writings, which she found disturbing. She paused after her extraordinary opening, but was about to continue when Holmes broke in abruptly.

Miss Brusher, have you really come here just to express concern about these writings of your neighbour? I can see no reason whatever why I, for whom time is of some value, should investigate something like this. Why, if you ask my fellow lodger, Dr Watson here, he will confirm that when I talk to him at all, it is mainly to point out his literary shortcomings. But that does not mean I propose to become a literary critic, and I see no point in adding your fellow lodger to the list of people whose writings I find wanting in true intellectual rigour.

But, Mr Holmes, she countered. If you will allow me to read you more of Mr Carr’s writings, I can assure you that you will find them intriguing and grotesque.

My friend started at the word grotesque. Watson! he exclaimed. That word again – for me it always carries an underlying suggestion of the tragic or terrible.

Miss Brusher’s choice of words had made Holmes prepared to give her a longer audience. He laid down the Bunsen burner he had taken into his hand, reached for his pipe and sat back in his armchair with his eyes half-closed. Pray tell me a little about yourself before you resume reading, he requested.

My name is Violet Brusher. I am a professional typist and live in lodgings at Prague Square. One of my fellow lodgers, Mr Joseph Carr, works in banking. Over the last few weeks he has taken to reading me what he claims is a book he is writing about his life. He has indeed become quite invasive in his attempts to read this work to me and has gone so far as to foist typescript onto me. While I am a woman who can look after herself, I find his writings so outlandish that I felt I should raise their content with someone in authority, but I am uncertain with whom. I then thought of you.

She started reading again. The document she read from described the arrest and investigation of Joseph Carr. It was clear that Carr had been released although was still the subject of a process. Yet the narrative never stated any offence that he had committed or been accused of. It introduced characters such as Miss Brusher herself, other neighbours of Carr and figures associated with the arresting authority. Miss Brusher was reading a passage in which one of these was quoted as saying