The Revenant of Thraxton Hall, Vaughn Entwistle

The Revenant of Thraxton Hall (the Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, book 1)
Vaughn Entwistle
ISBN: 9781250035004
Fantasy of Manners: What if the author of Sherlock Holmes lived in a world where the paranormal really did exist?

I liked this quite a lot, except for a few really minor niggles here and there.  First off, I adore Wilde, and I hope that we get quite a lot of him enjoying his life before everything goes to shit for him (poor guy).  I also like that we get to see a side of Doyle that most people aren't aware of - his worries about his family tendency towards insanity, his grief over his wife, his seething resentment of Sherlock Holmes, and his stubborn determination that he will be remembered for his "serious" writings and his interest in the paranormal.  That last bit is actually the most interesting here, because in Entwistle's world (and I really really hope that's a pseudonym) the paranormal is actually real and can interact violently with the world and with living persons.

The story is pretty simple - a locked-room murder mystery, but with one twist; the murder has to be solved before it happens in order to keep it from happening.  Doyle is a phlegmatic hero (aided immensely by Wilde's antics whenever the action needs a bit of spice) and the cast of characters is suitably eccentric and mysterious.  I feel like this could be an homage to the movie Clue.  The Lady of Thraxton Hall is a psychic medium, and she has forseen her death at a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research (yes, a real thing, both then and now) taking place at her ancestral pile.  The suspects, er, guests, all assembled per vision, poor Doyle has to work out the mystery to save the young Lady's life, aided only by Wilde, his raging libido, and a ghostly, sardonic Sherlock who mocks him in his dreams.

The characterization was a bit slim at times (with a large cast, nearly impossible to avoid) but the main characters and main villains got handled respectably.  I especially appreciated the time spent with George.

Despite knowing that poor Wilde's life is about to go downhill, I'm looking forward to continuing this series.