The Flying Scotsman

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Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000263 EndHTML:0000015442 StartFragment:0000003402 EndFragment:0000015406 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/twk/Desktop/00_2015newversionebooks/The%20Flying%20Scotsman_yarbro_new-id5.5/bookfiles/The%20Flying%20Scotsman_metadata.doc The Flying Scotsman: A Mycroft Holmes Novel Mycroft Holmes 03 By Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Bill Fawcett (writing as Quinn Fawcett) Price: $4.99 ISBN: Publication: July 2, 2015 Imprint: Event Horizon EBooks/Event Horizon Publishing Group Copyright © 2015 by Bill Fawcett & Associates Original Print Copyright © 1999 by Quinn Fawcett PRINT HISTORY: Tor Forge/October 1999 Print Pages:   Description:   The Flying Scotsman:   A luxury train and the fastest way to travel between London and Edinburgh, has become the secret escape route for a European Prince who has narrowly escaped assassination at a royal wedding—an assassination intended to prevent the finalization of a treaty vital to British interests in Europe.          Posing as a journalist, Mycroft Holmes and Paterson Guthrie, Holmes’s assistant in his adventures, board the train to protect the prince during what should have been a quick, safe trip to Scotland. Their journey is interrupted almost immediately by another try at murder.          Guthrie spots some familiar faces among his fellow passengers. He and Mycroft have tangled with Scottish laird Sir Cameron Macmillan before. Is he behind the attempted assassinations? Then there’s the beautiful and dangerous Pauline Gatspy. She’s helped Mycroft and Guthrie in the past, but that’s no guarantee that she’s on their side—England’s side—this time.          The Flying Scotsman combines the established thrills and chills of the Mycroft Holmes series with the history and high society life of Scotland’s version of the Orient Expresss.   FROM THE PERSONAL JOURNAL OF PHILIP TYERS:            Word has come from the Admiralty that no attempt was made on the other double; in fact, there is some doubt among the highly placed officers that the ruse was successful, and that there was no attempt made because it was known the man was not HHPO. This could mean that the assassin might have learned of the change in plans that put HHPO aboard the Flying Scotsman, which is a development that can only be viewed with alarm.          Between reading the lines of Mosca and fretting about MH, Sutton has voiced concern for something that has me even more dismayed—that there may be two assassins working in concert, with the same intention as our use of doubles: to throw us off the scent of the primary assassin and his target. Sutton is afraid that the assassin may be aboard the Flying Scotsman with MH, G, and HHPO, an idea I can only view with utmost horror.   Note: This use of the character of Mycroft Holmes is done with the kind permission of Dame Jean Conan Doyle.   The Flying Scotsman of the North Eastern line had a long and illustrious career. Although I have been at pains not to deviate too significantly from its history, even though the story is set in 1896, just after the Railway Race to the North that occurred in 1895, I have used the route taken by the train since 1892, although changes in the route were made before and since then. Changes in the configuration of the train were rare except during the actual speed runs, but the Directors did consent to them more than ten times by 1890, and so I have extended their gracious allowance to the fictional events of this story.     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   Bio: A professional writer for more than forty years, 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.