The Scottish Ploy

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Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000266 EndHTML:0000014680 StartFragment:0000003405 EndFragment:0000014644 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/twk/Desktop/00_2015newversionebooks/MH04%20The%20Scottish%20Ploy_yarbro_new-id5.5/bookfiles/The%20Scottish%20Ploy_metadata.doc The Scottish Ploy: A Mycroft Holmes Novel Mycroft Holmes 04 By Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Bill Fawcett (writing as Quinn Fawcett) Price: $4.99 eISBN: Publication: August 14, 2015 Imprint: Event Horizon EBooks/Event Horizon Publishing Group Copyright © 2015 by Bill Fawcett & Associates Original Print Copyright © 2000 by Quinn Fawcett PRINT HISTORY: Tor Forge/December 2000 Print Pages: 352   Description:   In The Scottish Ploy, British sleuth Mycroft Holmes and his associates contend once more with the sinister agents of the secret organization known as the Brotherhood.          Seemingly unconnected events pull Mycroft in several directions at once. To prevent the leaders of an anarchist group from reaching England’s shores, Mycroft must, much to his dismay, become part of the intended reconciliation of a husband and wife.          Then there are the minor puzzles: Why is gentleman who claims to be Turkish seeking his supposedly kidnapped brother in London? Why does an eminent phrenologist urgently want Mycroft’s opinion on the inhabitants of his asylum? Who has been following Mycroft and his estimable secretary, the amiable Paterson Guthrie, through London’s foggy streets? What motivated the attempted assassination of an Admiralty courier on Mycroft’s own doorstep? When the lovely Penelope Gatspy saves Guthrie’s life, is it because of the attraction between them or on orders of the mysterious “lodge” she serves?          But, most important to Mycroft—who is behind the kidnapping of his old friend, the actor Edmund Sutton, who was in the midst of a triumphant run as Macbeth in Shakespeare’s infamous “Scottish Play”?   FROM THE PERSONAL JOURNAL OF PHILIP TYERS:   It is almost eight and Sutton has not returned from the Diogenes Club; he has maintained MH’s habitual visits to the minute before now, which should have brought him back here no later than seven-forty-three or -four. I am somewhat troubled by this unprecedented delay. It is most unlike Sutton, who, if nothing else, is punctual. If I cannot find Sutton on the street, I will ask for him—in the persona of MH—at the club. If I can learn nothing there, I will speak to the Golden Lodge guards, to find out if they noticed anything irregular. I do not like to assume the worst, but I am truly worried that I have not seen him, even if he decided, for some unknown reason, to approach the flat from the rear ...   Review Quotes:          “Authorized by the Conan Doyle Estate—and great fun to boot.” —Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer            “Mycroft relies on action, negotiation, and manipulation—rather like John Le Carré’s Smiley. The book is appealing, with a nice dash of actual Victorian political characters and events. It’s fun to read.” —San Jose Mercury News            “Any Sherlock Holmes fan will want to read Quinn Fawcett’s homage to the great detective.” —Midwest Book Review            “The star is Holmes, and the narrator is his sidekick. But the Holmes is Mycroft, Sherlock’s older, smarter brother; and the narrator is Paterson Erskine Guthrie, not Dr. Watson. Absorbing.” —Publishers Weekly   Thanks:   The character of Mycroft Holmes is portrayed in this novel with the kind permission of Dame Jean Conan Doyle.   Dedication:   For CLARENCE and PATTI   Bio: A professional writer for more than forty years, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has sold over eighty books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and more than three dozen essays, introductions, and reviews. She also composes serious music. Her first professional writing - in 1961-2 - was as a playwright for a now long-defunct children's theater company. By the mid-60s she had switched to writing stories and hasn't stopped yet. After leaving college in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her books, and occasionally for the books of other writers. She has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects, everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to religion and law. She is constantly adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and places that might provide fodder for stories. In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life Achievement Award in 2009. A skeptical occultist for forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco. She has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with two cats: the irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera.