In the summer of 1889, JM Stoddart organised a dinner party in the Langham Hotel in London. His aim was to wine, dine and generally schmooze members of the London literary scene in the hope of securing submissions from this side of the Atlantic Ocean for his literary periodical, the Philadelphia-based Lippincott Monthly Magazine.
It was, by all accounts, a successful evening. Although Rudyard Kipling failed to show up, Arthur Conan Doyle described it as a “golden evening”, and was said to have been thrilled by fellow invitee Oscar Wilde’s effusive praise for one of his earlier works. Stoddart, too, left happy, having secured agreements from both authors to write stories for his magazine. Doyle decided to revisit a character he’d previously written a story about and produced his second ever Sherlock Holmes story: The Sign of the Four. Wilde, for his contribution, produced his one and only novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray…
Nearly 150 years later, a bunch of writers all across the planet tracked down revisited Stoddart’s challenge and wrote an original mystery story each.
This collection is the result.