The Stark Munro Letters

This is the story of a young doctor in Victorian Britain. In this collection of letters written to an American friend, Stark Munro tells of the trials and tribulations that face him as he tries to build his practice. Each letter contains two elements: one part is the narrative of events in the life of a young medical graduate in his efforts to set up a practice, as his own man, with a very little assistance from anyone else; the other part of each letter is didactic, presented as his friendly arguments with his close friend Swanborough. The hyper-rational side of his personality that Arthur Conan Doyle aired in his Sherlock Holmes series of detective tales was only one piece of the puzzle. Conan Doyle also had a mystical side, and he was fascinated by the supernatural and the occult. In the epistolary stories collected in The Stark Munro Letters, he masterfully combines both of his passions, exploring supernatural themes from the perspective of a master detective.