The West End Horror

The West End Horror: A Posthumous Memoir of John H. Watson, M.D. is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Nicholas Meyer, published in 1976. It takes place after Meyer's other two Holmes pastiches, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The Canary Trainer, though it was published in between the two.

The plot concerns a series of strange murders in London's theatre district at the end of the 19th century. Contrary to what the press has sometimes asserted, The West End Horror has nothing to do with (though it arguably bears subtle references to) Jack the Ripper or his crimes.

Although this novel does not feature a dramatic action climax (unlike Meyer's other two pastiches), the mystery's dénouement may well affect many more people than those of Meyer's other adventures. It also includes a first meeting between the great detective and Doctor Moore Agar, whose "dramatic introduction to Holmes" was one Watson, in the original Arthur Conan Doyle story "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", wrote that he "may some day recount."

Plot summary

The book is written in the form of a false document. It opens with a foreword by Meyer, who states that the manuscript was brought to his attention by a woman with some familial connection to Horace Vernet, also an ancestor of Holmes. The woman had read The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and thought Meyer might be interested. Although damaged by water, the manuscript proved authentic.

Dr. Watson explains in his own preface that he did not publish the story because of the number of well-known persons who would be affected - persons whose identity would be impossible to disguise. Holmes had for a long time refused Watson permission to write the story on these very grounds, but Watson eventually persuaded him by promising to place the manuscript in Holmes' hands, the only condition being that he not destroy it.

The story does, indeed, involve many well-known people, including George Bernard Shaw, who hires Holmes to look into the death of an unpleasant theatre critic; Sir Arthur Sullivan, one of whose singers at the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was another victim of the murderer; and others including W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Frank Harris.

It is to be noticed that the reader encounters a young policeman called Stanley Hopkins, who appears several times in Conan Doyle's stories although Nicolas Meyer does not say so. Furthermore, this first encounter is supposed to take place in 1895, whereas "Black Peter" by Conan Doyle, and where Stanley Hopkins is a major character, took place in late 1894.

It should also be noted that Meyers' novel mirrored certain fact in the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. In the novel, Holmes managed to clear the name of a shy Parsee Indian wrongfully accused of murder; in real life Conan Doyle played a significant part in helping George Edalji, a Parsee victim of injustice in the English court.