Suggested Reading from the Editor

To supplement Dr. Watson’s narrative, interested readers should obviously begin with Jack London’s unfinished novel, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. It turns out that Watson was correct on two counts related to the book.

First, another author actually did complete the work. In 1963, American mystery writer Robert L. Fish composed the final third of The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. Although Fish could have followed the various suggestions left by both London and London’s widow Charmian (their notes appear in the Penguin edition), he composed his own conclusion. It should be emphasised, however, that none of the three options presents the ominous implications raised by Watson in The Outrage at the Diogenes Club.

Watson also accurately predicted that London’s novel would interest the movie industry. The film version of The Assassination Bureau appeared in 1969 starring Diana Rigg and Oliver Reed. It too, however, lacks the gravitas with which Watson rightly approached the subject. As for the product of Jack London’s stay in England back in 1903, one should consult The People of the Abyss, his account of the debilitating conditions faced by the poor in London’s East End at the start of the twentieth century.

Additional information related to Dr. Watson’s narrative may be found in Dale L. Walker’s Jack London and Conan Doyle: A Literary Kinship. Of particular interest is the chapter with the Holmesian title, “The Singular Adventure of Hal Lewis’s Plots.” For the history of the assassination attempt on Theodore Roosevelt, Gerard Helferich’s Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin: Madness, Vengeance, and the Campaign of 1912 offers a detailed report. And, of course, The Seventh Bullet, Dr. Watson’s account (which I edited) of Sherlock Holmes’ investigation into the murder of David Graham Phillips, provides additional facts about that assassination in particular.

For information regarding what is now called the Elizabeth Tower in the palace of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament have published Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower, a most useful guide full of technological, historical, and anecdotal material as well as wonderful illustrations, including a fold-out cover, that depict the locations visited by Sherlock Holmes in his attempts to protect his brother.

It goes without saying that, since each of the volumes mentioned above was published before the recent discovery of this latest manuscript by Dr. Watson, none of them makes reference to any of the new details revealed in The Outrage at the Diogenes Club.