Carlos T. Dawring is a South Wales author of FULL-LENGTH Victorian mysteries, writing for readers who still enjoy the pleasure of settling into a substantial case.

His Sherlock Holmes investigations combine atmosphere, deduction, hidden motives and buried secrets with mysteries given room to properly unfold. Fog-bound streets, isolated houses, strange inheritances, locked rooms, old documents and carefully concealed crimes all form part of a growing world of Victorian mystery.

Carlos writes with a particular love of structure, evidence and hidden meaning. His stories invite the reader to follow the clues alongside Holmes and Watson, question every explanation and suspect everyone until reason finally exposes the truth.

For readers who miss the old-fashioned mystery novel: a complete investigation, a genuine puzzle and a case worth getting lost in.

THE

SHERLOCK HOLMES

COLLECTION

BOOK 1  ~ When Dr Matthew Eldren summons Henry Holmes to Ashcombe Hall, the death of governess Clara Whitcombe is presented as a tragic fall. Yet the house is too clean, the servants too frightened, and the Ashcombe family too eager to bury every question beneath propriety. Henry discovers hints of a hidden marriage, a disputed bloodline, and a child’s lesson book altered to protect an inheritance, but the truth slips beyond his reach.

Thirty years later, Sherlock Holmes receives his father’s unfinished papers and finds that the old case has not died with Clara. At Ashcombe Hall, pride has hardened into silence, witnesses have aged into fear, and the rightful heir may have been erased from history itself.

With Dr Watson beside him, Holmes must untangle forged records, family lies and a murder concealed beneath respectability. Solving it, Holmes must finish the case Henry began and force Ashcombe Hall to remember. But some secrets are guarded not by darkness alone, but by those who believe a great name is worth any sin.

BOOK 2 ~ When Dr Watson receives a troubling letter from his cousin Eleanor Harrington, companion to the fragile Helen Ashdown at Blackmere Hall, he brings the matter at once to Sherlock Holmes. Sir Charles Ashdown is living in terror of a strange phrase that has begun to haunt the old house: “The house remembers what the law refused.”

At Blackmere, Holmes finds a family ruled by silence, a forbidden east corridor, a ruined chapel, an old legal wrong & a household divided by fear. Before Sir Charles can complete a written acknowledgement of the truth, he is found murdered inside his locked study. The door is locked from within, the windows are bolted, the key is inside & a vital page from his confession has vanished.

As Holmes follows the trail through damaged parish records, hidden passages, missing documents & servant memory, the mystery turns from supernatural dread to something far colder: a family lie preserved across generations.

To solve the murder, Holmes must prove not only who killed Sir Charles, but why one missing page was worth killing for. 

Book 28 ~ When Edwin Paxton comes to Baker Street, he does not ask Sherlock Holmes to solve a murder. He asks him to save a fact.

Twenty-two years earlier, Paxton was suspected of murdering Ada Leighton, a brave young woman who had uncovered a dangerous truth hidden inside the Leighton Settlement. He was never charged, because an alibi saved him. But now that alibi is being taken apart piece by piece: the cabman doubts himself, the refuge ledger is questioned, an old witness is shaken, a clock is misread, and a letter is moved into the wrong light.

Then Paxton is found dead beside a confession Holmes does not believe.

As Holmes and Watson restore the order of the old evidence, they uncover a crime colder than murder alone: a respected legal mind has used truth itself as a weapon. To clear Paxton’s name, Holmes must prove that a man may be murdered twice: first in body, and then in reputation.

Book 29 ~ When Miss Hester Lorne arrives at Baker Street with a sealed envelope & an old family disgrace, Sherlock Holmes is drawn into one of his strangest investigations. Ambrose Lethbridge, a retired printer & charitable patron, has been found dead behind a secret door in his own library. The police suspect accident, remorse or suicide, but Holmes sees a darker design.

Lethbridge had been preparing to confess an old injustice connected to Hester’s ruined father, Nathaniel Lorne. He had also uncovered corruption inside The Open Door Society, where private declarations of shame & need had been turned into instruments of control.

As Holmes & Watson follow the trail of forged notes, hidden papers, stolen charity funds & a deadly prepared room, they discover that the murderer’s first weapon was not the secret door, but the sentence that sent Lethbridge through it. 

Book 30 ~ When celebrated actor-manager Sir Lucian Vellacott invites Sherlock Holmes to witness a private farewell performance of Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man, the evening appears to be no more than vanity dressed as art. Seven figures from Vellacott’s past are summoned to watch, each representing one age of life. But before the final curtain can fall, Sir Lucian collapses upon the stage & dies before his chosen audience.

The police look naturally to the final cup, the doctor’s draught & the last object handled before death. Holmes, however, sees that the performance has directed every eye towards the wrong ending.

As Holmes & Watson move through the theatre’s gaslit passages, old programmes, altered records & whispered grievances, a buried injustice begins to emerge. Years earlier, a man named Nathaniel Prynne was not merely disgraced. He was erased.

To solve Sir Lucian’s murder, Holmes must uncover the truth behind a corrupted act of justice, a poisoned emblem, & a name that powerful men tried to remove from history.