Sherlock Holmes: The Thinking Engine

March 1895. Hilary Term at Oxford. In the newly built extension to the University Galleries, ProfessorQuantock has put the finishing touches to a wondrous computational device which, he claims, is capableof analytical thought to rival that of the cleverest men alive. Indeed, his so-called Thinking Engine seemsequal to Sherlock Holmes himself in its deductive powers.To prove his point, Quantock programmes his machine to solve a murder in the Jericho area which hasbeen baffling Oxford police. The Engine identifies a suspect who proves not to have a valid alibi for thenight of the crime. The man is duly arrested and arraigned.Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore this challenge. He and Watson travel to Oxford, where a battle of witsensues between the great detective and his mechanical counterpart as they compete to see which of themcan be first to solve a series of crimes. As man and machine vie for supremacy, it becomes clear that theThinking Engine has its own agenda. Holmes’s and Watson’s lives are on the line as a ghost from the pastcatches up with them…

Author Biography

James Lovegrove is the New York Times best-selling author of The Age of Odin, the third novel in his critically-acclaimed Pantheon military SF series. He was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998 for his novel Days and for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2004 for his novel Untied Kingdom. He also reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He is the author of Sherlock Holmes: Gods of War and Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of [illegible]