''Mr. Fairlie's Final Journey'' is a

detective fiction Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as spec ...

novel by American writer

August Derleth August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and th ...

. It was released in 1968 by

Mycroft & Moran Mycroft & Moran was an imprint of Arkham House publishers and was created in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1945. The imprint was created to publish weird detective stories and the Solar Pons stories by August Derleth. Arkham retired the imprint in 1982 ...

in an edition of 3,493 copies. The novel is part of Derleth's

Solar Pons Solar Pons is a fictional detective created by August Derleth as a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Robert Bloch wrote of the series, "During a span of a century there have been literally hundreds of Sherlockian imitations, r ...

stories which are

pastiches A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking it ...

of the Sherlock Holmes tales of Arthur Conan Doyle. It was the eighth Solar Pons book published by Mycroft & Moran.

Plot summary

The book concerns the investigation into the death of Jonas Fairlie, who was murdered on a train while on his way to consult Solar Pons. To solve the mystery, Pons and his companion, Dr. Lyndon Parker, travel to Fairlie's home town of

Frome Frome ( ) is a town and civil parish in eastern Somerset, England. The town is built on uneven high ground at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills, and centres on the River Frome. The town, about south of Bath, is the largest in the Mendip ...

, Somerset and from there to Scotland (Pons only), Cheltenham in

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

and finally to a remote area on the coast of Wales.

References

* * * * {{Works of August Derleth 1968 American novels Sherlock Holmes pastiches Solar Pons