Book
The Misplaced Physician
First published 2025
London, 1895. Dr John H. Watson is bundled into a carriage from Baker Street and kidnapped while Sherlock Holmes is abroad, leaving Timothy Badger and Benjamin Watson to recover the man who normally stands beside their famous mentor. Ransom notes offer clues but also raise an awkward question: did Watson know his captor? With Holmes unavailable, the younger detectives must mobilise their own contacts, methods and experience quickly enough to find the missing physician before the kidnapping becomes a murder.
Although it plays knowingly with Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional world, the novel remains rooted in the practical geography and institutions of late-Victorian London. Doctors occupied a position of growing professional authority, private investigators relied on informal information networks, and the expanding postal and transport systems gave kidnappers new ways to move people and messages through the metropolis. The case also completes an important stage in Tim and Benjamin’s development by forcing them to solve a high-stakes investigation without depending on Holmes to direct them.
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