The Darkwater Hall Mystery

Limited first edition. Small 8vo. Pp. 35, [1]. Marbled paper wrappers in integral flaps with printed title label to spine. Three b/w line drawings, one full-page, by Elspeth Sojka. Limited edition of 165 copies, of which this is number 94. Hand-printed by Alan Anderson on Abbey Mills paper.

Sherlockian pastiche memoir 'written' by Dr Watson, a shortened version of which first appeared in Playboy (May 1978). Originally a script for a 1974 BBC TV movie adaptation called Doctor Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery, directed by James Cellan Jones and starring Edward Fox in the title role. Amis thought "the reviews were excellent," while writer Alan Barnes called it "[a] part-deconstruction, part-parody of Doyle" that "end[ed] up resembling a long drawn-out shaggy dog story."

[Halliwell A57]