The Crack in the Lens by Darlene A. Cypser

Synopsis: If someone had asked Sherlock Holmes later in the year, there is little doubt that he would have said his life began that spring day in 1871 when he met Violet Rushdale upon the moors and ended in the winter some months distant. His mother would have disputed the former claim, and many, both friend and foe, would come to deny the latter. Yet what happened that year nearly cost him his life and his sanity, and strongly influenced the man he was to become.

It is well known that the toughest steel that makes the sharpest swords must be plunged into the fire, then beaten and reshaped. So it is as well with the best and wisest of men.

SRP $14.95
Trade Paperback
292 pages
9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
Publication Date: December 23, 2010
Publisher: Foolscap & Quill, LLC

Reviews:
"Darlene Cypser's The Crack in the Lens is a well-written story of Sherlock Holmes' early life in Yorkshire.... There's romance and adventure, nice local flavor, and a good look at what set young Sherlock on the path to becoming what he is in the Canonical tales." Peter Blau, Editor of Scittlebits & Bytes

"The Crack in the Lens ... tells an engrossing story of the boy Holmes and at the same time explores the reasons why the man Holmes turned out as he did - a brilliant, unconventional, and apparently emotionless righter of wrongs. In this account Mycroft, Sherrinford and Sherlock are the sons of Squire Siger Holmes of Mycroft Manor in Yorkshire, where Sherlock is educated by a private tutor, Professor James Moriarty. These inventions of William Baring-Gould have become far more influential in America than they should be, but they make a colourful and appropriately atmospheric basis for a tale that seems to owe as much to Emily Brontë as to Arthur Conan Doyle." Roger Johnson, Editor of The District Messenger, Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London

"The writing is clear and direct, with prose that evokes the Yorkshire Dales and the people who have lived there from time out of mind.... The wild and lovely scenery is a backdrop for a tale of madness, love and deceit with a few side trips into the normal world of family and friends.... It is a tale about forging a boy into a man, as one heats, pounds, tempers and quenches steel.... This is a book that provides explanations for some of the odd qualities we have all remarked in the Master. Those qualities could not have come easily or pleasantly." Philip K. Jones