The Darlington Substitution

By Hugh Ashton

The deed box of Dr. John Watson, entrusted by him over a century ago to Cox & Co. of Charing Cross, and which made its way late last year to Hugh Ashton in Kamakura, Japan, continues to yield treasure.

The box proved to have a false bottom, under which lay the manuscript of a full-length adventure of Sherlock Holmes, in which the great detective needs all his cunning and detective powers to unravel the mysteries at Hareby Hall.

Mentioned in passing by Dr. Watson in his account of A Scandal in Bohemia, The Darlington Substitution is a tale of deceit, treachery, and murder most foul, set in the wild Border country of northern England. Holmes and Watson encounter a centuries-old legend which tells of the future extinction of an ancient noble family, and set themselves against one of the most ingenious and fiendish villains ever to cross the path of Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes and his faithful biographer come to life again in this case, following in the tradition already set in the three volumes of the “Deed Box” series of shorter Holmes adventures published by Inknbeans Press. These have been extremely favorably received by readers and reviewers, with one commenting, “I would have assumed that they were indeed previously undiscovered Doyle originals,” and another, “The author has followed the approaches of the original Doyle stories to the extent that these could have been easily included in the original works”.

To celebrate the discovery of The Darlington Substitution, Inknbeans Press and Hugh Ashton have produced a paperback edition that closely mimics the original Sherlock Holmes stories in its typography and orthography – “printed steampunk” – which should delight fans of the original Holmes stories as they peruse this latest addition to the adventures of the most famous sleuth ever to grace the pages of fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inknbeans Press
• Release date: Aug 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452409573

Hugh Ashton

Hugh Ashton was born in the UK in 1956, and after graduation from university worked in the technology industry around Cambridge (the first personal computer he used was Sir Clive Sinclair’s personal TRS-80) until 1988, when a long-standing interest in the country took him to Japan.There he worked for a Japanese company producing documentation for electronic instruments and high-end professional audio equipment, helped to set up the infrastructure for Japan’s first public Internet service provider, worked for major international finance houses, and worked on various writing projects, including interviewing figures in the business and scientific fields, and creating advertorial reports for Japanese corporations to be reprinted in international business magazines.Along the way, he met and married Yoshiko, and also gained certificates in tea ceremony and iaidō (the art of drawing a sword quickly).In 2008, he wrote and self-published his first published novel, Beneath Gray Skies, an alternative history in which the American Civil War was never fought, and the independent Confederacy forms an alliance with the German National Socialist party. This was followed by At the Sharpe End, a techno-financial-thriller set in Japan at the time of the Lehman’s crash, and Red Wheels Turning, which re-introduced Brian Finch-Malloy, the hero of Beneath Gray Skies, referred to by one reviewer as “a 1920s James Bond”.In 2012, Inknbeans Press of California published his first collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures, Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D., which was swiftly followed by many other volumes of Holmes’ adventures, hailed by Sherlockians round the world as being true to the style and the spirit of the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Inknbeans also published Tales of Old Japanese and other books by Ashton, including the Sherlock Ferret series of detective adventures for children. He and Yoshiko returned to the UK in 2016 for family reasons, where they now live in the Midlands cathedral city of Lichfield.In December 2017, Inknbeans Press ceased to be, following the sudden death of the proprietor, chief editor and leading light. Since that time, Ashton has reclaimed the copyright of his work, and has republished it in ebook and paper editions, along with the work of several other former Inknbeans authors.He continues to write Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as various other fiction and non-fiction projects, including documentation for forensic software, and editing and layout work on a freelance basis, in between studying for an MSc in forensic psychological studies with the Open University.