This episode, we travel to Wiltshire where an Indian army surgeon is being hounded by a very unwelcome visitor, in ‘The Story of the Brown Hand’ from 1898.

Read the show notes at https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2025/06/64-story-of-brown-hand-1898.html

You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Story_of_the_Brown_Hand

Or listen to an audiobook version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-tK9m42tKY

The episode will be uploaded to our YouTube channel soon, where you can listen with closed captions. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle

And follow us on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/doingsofdoyle.com). We don’t do Twitter no more.

Synopsis

Following his retirement to an estate on the edge of Salisbury Plain after 40 years’ service in India, Sir Dominic Holden has invited his nephew Dr Hardacre to stay for a weekend. Hardacre assumes that this is simply a family courtesy, as he is only sixth in line of inheritance to his uncle’s fortune. He finds an hospitable enough household but one wrapped in an intense gloom, whose source he cannot fathom. Until, that is, Sir Dominic shows great interest in Hardacre’s ghost-hunting exploits with the Psychical Research Society…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We will be joined by a mystery interview guest…

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

Hello and welcome to Episode 63. This episode we travel to the very north of mainland Scotland where one man’s solitude is interrupted by two mysterious castaways, in ‘The Man from Archangel’ from 1885.

You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Man_from_Archangel

Or listen to a Librivox reading here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts2yXxclU-c

The episode will be uploaded to our YouTube channel soon, where you can listen with closed captions. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle

And follow us on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/doingsofdoyle.com). We don’t do Twitter no more.

Synopsis

Having come into an unexpected inheritance, the morose and misanthropic John McVittie is able to give up his unrewarding legal practice in the English Midlands and retire to a remote coastal estate in Caithness in eastern Scotland. Here he pursues his esoteric scientific and philosophic interests, with only his aged housekeeper for company. But his quiet existence is disrupted when a Russian schooner is wrecked in a storm and McVittie rescues a young woman from the doomed ship. Apparently, however, she is not the only survivor as shortly afterwards McVittie discovers that his lonely house is under observation from a mysterious bearded stranger…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We discuss ACD’s unconventional ghost story, ‘The Story of the Brown Hand’ (1898), from his Round the Fire Stories.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

This episode, we welcome to the podcast journalist and author Andrew Finkel to talk about his debut novel The Adventure of the Second Wife (2024), a multi-layered mystery in which an avid Sherlockian investigate a missing Sherlock Holmes story…

About Andrew Finkel

Based for many years in Istanbul, Andrew Finkel has corresponded for international media including The Times, The Economist, TIME, CNN and for the Latitude section of The New York Times. He is also a contributing editor and restaurant critic for Cornucopia Magazine. His articles, editorials and broadcast commentaries have appeared in an equal variety of media that includes The Washington Post, The Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, The Spectator and the BBC. His experiences of working in the Turkish language press, in newsrooms, as a columnist and on television, prompted him some ten years ago to co-found Platform24 (P24) a human rights NGO that supports independent journalism and free expression. Among its projects is the popular Kıraathane, the Istanbul Literature House. He is the author of scholarly articles on press capture and media integrity as well as the Oxford University Press handbook, Turkey, What Everyone Needs to Know. His recently published debut novel The Adventure of the Second Wife revolves around the well-documented obsession which Abdülhamid II, the last great Ottoman Sultan, had for the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

The Adventure of the Second Wife (Even Keel Press, 2024)

Strange that Abdülhamid II, the last great Ottoman Sultan, would have Sherlock Holmes stories read to him before he went to sleep. Even stranger is that his obsession helped change the course of history.

The explanation lies in the mystery of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dying words, that the one Sherlock adventure still to intrigue him was that of ‘The Second Wife’. For no such story exists… Or does it?

The Adventure of the Second Wife is the debut novel of renowned journalist Andrew Finkel – a clever, compelling mystery about a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast who with the help of a brilliant Turkish professor, tries to solve the enigma of Arthur Conan Doyle’s dying words only to upend his life in the process.

Purchase from Cornucopia Press here.

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We head back into Gothic territory with ‘The Man from Archangel’ (1885), claimed to be one of Conan Doyle’s favourite stories. You can read the story here.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.