When misadventure led a schoolboy in London to employment at Baker Street, few could have guessed where his introduction to Sherlock Holmes would lead. But as the lad matures and he finds himself caught in the middle of a murder investigation, his friendship with Holmes and Watson lures him into the role of detective. "Billy" documents his experiences, and soon his sleuthing skills not only bring him to another murder, but also lay the foundation for his metamorphosis into a famous mystery writer, the novelist the world now knows as Raymond Chandler.

A STUDY IN SYNCHRONICITY weaves an English murder mystery set in 1906 into the framework of a modern-day whodunit. The contemporary plot begins when American writer Todd Stringer wins a writing contest for his short story set in turn-of-the century London. Not only does the story feature the Sherlock Holmes-like detective Corliss Simms, but it also echoes the language of Simms's celebrated but long-dead creator, the Conan Doyle-like Sir Reginald Bertrand Dunbarton. As Todd's real life oddly begins to parallel murderous aspects of his own crime story, he becomes more intertwined in his fictional narrative than he could ever have imagined. For just after the publication of his story is halted, the executor of Dunbarton's estate turns up murdered in the same manner as the victim in Todd's fictional story, and Todd finds himself the target of an actual murder investigation. What began as an attempt to get his story published becomes, with the help of a lovely young woman he meets in England, a quest to find the real murderer, a quest which takes on added urgency as he tries to eliminate himself as the prime suspect.

They called her "Lady Stewart" when she was married to a British aristocrat. They called her "Miss Cora "when she ran a brothel in Florida. But she called herself "Mrs. Crane" when she asked Sherlock Holmes to locate her common-law husband, writer Stephen Crane, who'd gone missing in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. In their attempt to fulfil the lady's request, Holmes and Watson encounter a world of celebrity authors, terrorist bombings, and haunted manor houses. But it is only when Stephen Crane falls victim to a notorious blackmailer that the master detective and his partner find themselves face-to-face with cold-blooded murder. Under darkened skies, a solitary apparition stood brightly illuminated on the ship's gloomy deck. Or so it seemed. Cloaked in a long white raincoat-the same gleaming duster he'd worn in the face of Spanish gunfire at San Juan Heights - Stephen Crane looked for all the world like the ghost so many people thought he'd already become.