Galgatean

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00MLDU676/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Found it - great read, as was Anno Dracula, also by Kim Newman, which also featured Sherlock Holmes!

i read a really good novel where Moriarty was the hero, can't remember what it was called though. It's not a Conan Doyle book, very entertaining though.

Be good to see more of this sort of stuff, I find it really interesting. Arthur Conan Doyle was obsessed with spiritualism throughout much of his life which is pretty evident in numerous interviews and write ups. He thought it much more intriguing than any of the fictional cases Holmes ever investigated. Conan Doyle did some investigation at a haunted pub in Watford Village (near where the Watford Gap is now) in the early 1890s , the Henley Arms. Apparently the landlord, a chap called Alfred Newton let him hold a seance there to try and find out why the spirit of a long dead serving maid was haunting the place. Then he went on to investigate some hauntings in Devon, and at other places. He also did his own investigations into the Wyrley Horse Mutilations (these days livestock mutilations are big Forteana in the USA, but we had them in the UK first!) and was able to exonerate George Edalji, destroying the case against him.

I wish mustaches would make a comeback now. I grew one a couple of years ago when I was really fed up with work and didn't care if I got 'stuck on' for looking scruffy. I grew it really long and waxed the ends, and curled them up - it looked brilliant, I have loads of photos - I looked like a proper Victorian headmaster or something. I shaved my head too. I felt it gave me a real sense of presence! Looked a bit like Conan Doyle come to think of it! My employer didn't care one way or the other though, so when I changed jobs I trimmed it back to 'normal' size and grew a beard to balance it out as I didn' t think the interview panel from my prospective new employer would appreciate a pseudo-Victorian themed applicant and would prefer someone a bit more 'normal'. I remember when I was younger, only weirdos had beards, but now whenever I'm in a meeting I count the number of men who have beards, and they nearly always outnumber the ones who don't. Hopefully mustaches will come back soon. That'd be so cool.

This is probably really off the wall, but my (2nd) favourite fictional detective is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Sherlock Holmes (aside from the drug use that is), and it's DS Bruce Robertson of the Lothian and Borders Constabulary (as was) a creation of Irvine Welch in the novel 'Filth'. It's an unpleasant read, as it takes the reader into the dark blue world of a seriously deranged and degenerate rogue detective who can't get any lower. He's not even a likable character: apart from the nasty stuff that is articulated, there are hints of all sorts of really taboo horrendous crimes that he has likely committed and buried in his head. But it's just so readable, once you get past the tongue in which it's written. Hound of the Baskervilles aside, it's the only novel that I've read over and over again.

thank you

greetings all