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mfalgoust
Apr 18, 20235 min read

Looking for a New Twist on Holmes? Examine "A Case of Madness" from Yvonne Knop


When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth...


But for Yvonne Knop's main character, Andrew Thomas, he can't quite determine if it's the truth or just A Case of Madness.


This is my stop during the book blitz for A Case of Madness by Yvonne Knop. In her new novel, a world-weary Sherlock Holmes scholar loses his job and his sanity when the great detective materializes in his flat to help solve a mystery that involves a handsome male stranger.


This book blitz is organized by Lola's Blog Tours. The book blitz ran from April 3-16, 2023, but you can still visit ALL the fabulous blogs spotlighting this title. See the tour schedule here: http://www.lolasblogtours.net/book-blitz-a-case-of-madness-by-yvonne-knop. Grab your magnifying glasses and examine an excerpt from this fresh twist on the Holmes tropes below. You can also take a chance at winning a FREE print copy of A Case of Madness here .


A Case of Madness

by Yvonne Knop

Publication Date: 20 March 2023

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Age Category: Adult


Synopsis:


Andrew Thomas just got sacked. He's permanently drunk. He's got cancer. Is inescapably gay. Was hit by a bus. And he's fallen in love with a stranger whose life he saved.


As a newly-unemployed Sherlock Holmes scholar, Andrew knows only Holmes can help him untangle the madness his life has become, but Holmes isn't real. Except he absolutely appeared in Andrew's house, told him he's in love with a man he just met…and then in a fit of pique Andrew sent him away.


Sure Holmes is probably a hallucination or a specter or a ghost, but now Andrew desperately needs his help. So to find the answer to his case and the man of his dreams, Andrew takes to chasing a fictional character through London with his very own Watson.


Links:



 

Excerpt

The Adventure of the Noble Hermit While strolling amid the students and scholars rushing into the University of London, I ignored the urge to check my pocket watch.

If there was ever a day to dawdle,it was today. The firstday of summer that actually felt like the season it claimed to be. And the day of my personal disaster.

It wasn’t a ‘thistrain will splitat the next station and you just sat down with your meal deal’disaster, but it was equallyinconvenient. After decades of laboring in academia, I was about to become involuntarily unemployed. Apart from that – and this might be even more important – I was also going to die.

To delay the confrontation a bit longer, I looked for a shaded place to smoke and then took long, luxurious drags on my cigarette. A cough struggled to tear itself free from my chest, but I suppressed it. Not now. Focus.

Few people knew my name or my publications. But some such people existed – people who were as fascinated by a very specific man as I was, and who seemed to value my works more than I did. The man I wrote about lived in Baker Street, and he was partly to blame for my situation. Though I liked to think of myself as a charmingly anachronistic gentleman, I increasingly felt I was just a dafter in a fine suit who lurked around public buildings. Instead of

engaging in modern life, I was immersed in the world of Sherlock Holmes and all things Victorian, with the natural effect of many acquaintances leaving or going extinct. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the company of others; it was that I struggled in the company of others. And they struggled in the company of me.


You see, the fact that I knew my dearest detective had appeared on-screen in over two hundred and twenty adaptations did not give me much hope I would find out what people did for fun. But what of fun? What about achievement? Holmes is the most filmed novel character of all time—among humans, at least; Dracula has been filmed even more often. This connection filled me with joy, and I believed it could be combined in a curious way. Dracula Holmes: he investigates at night because he’s not just a detective, no—he’s also a vampire. Greedy for blood and knowledge.


I finished my cigarette and stepped from the shadows only to immediately collide with a young man in the most colorful trainers I’d ever seen. In a split-second knockout victory, he fell to the ground covered in the flyers he had been holding in his hand just seconds before.


I bent down immediately to help him. “I’m so sorry,” I said, quickly picking up his flyers from the pavement. At least those which hadn’t fallen into the grey puddle right next to us.

“It’s okay,” he said, and he looked at me. His blue eyes seemed friendly though his gaze was intense.


I quickly looked down again. To my surprise, the flyers weren’t gig announcements or takeaway adverts. In fact, they were promoting something very dear to my heart. “I like theater,” I said, handing him back a few of the flyers. “I thought theater was dead for young people.”


He smiled. “Most young people get runover by perfect strangers. That’s why so few make it to the stage. Anyway…I’m still alive.”


That he was. Alive, handsome, and holding a slim stack of remaining flyers. Slightly crumpled.

“I’m far from perfect,” I remarked, thinking of the trouble I had caused him.


 

About the Author:


Yvonne is a bi and nonbinary writer who dedicates their free time to extending the secret Gay Agenda.


Although born and raised in the north of Germany, Yvonne’s passion for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, their sassy humor, and aversion to talking on public transport made them suspiciously British from early on.


As a natural matter of cause and effect, Yvonne moved to London in 2014 and started to write (a novel for the drawer). No word was written until 2017 when the sudden question of ‘What if I could talk to Sherlock Holmes?’ came up to them.


Conducting PhD research in the world’s most extensive Sherlock Holmes collection, located in Minneapolis, USA, was a great help for answering that question. The result was not a PhD, but their debut Novel A Case of Madness, originally written in German and in a bold move translated by the author themselves when nobody in Germany understood a word they were saying.


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