Michael Robertson

Malice Domestic 13: Mystery Most Geographical is a 2018 anthology of thirty original mystery stories, each set in a different corner of the world. The collection follows the Agatha Christie tradition of traditional mysteries, transporting readers from the Congressional Cemetery in Washington to the remote Scottish Isle of Skye, from a cabin in the Canadian muskeg to the beaches of Hawaii. A barrister's clerk navigates London, smugglers work a summer scheme, and a death unfolds on the Northern Lights Express. Each location shapes the crime at its center. The stories span continents and eras, but all share a common thread: place is never just backdrop. Geography determines motive, method, and escape. A divination leads to murder, payback accrues interest on a distant island, and the moai statues of Easter Island witness a killing. Whether the setting is a lake town, an arroyo, or a ridgeline, the question each story asks is the same: how does the land itself become complicit in what happens there?

The Baker Street Letters is a mystery novel that begins when an eight-year-old girl in Los Angeles writes to Sherlock Holmes for help finding her missing father, a geological surveyor who disappeared after mapping a subway route. The letter arrives at 221b Baker Street, now home to the law offices of brothers Reggie and Nigel Heath. Nigel, instead of filing it away, decides to investigate and flies to Los Angeles. He leaves behind a dead body on his office floor. Reggie follows his brother to California, along with Laura, a stage actress and his sometime lover who has also won Nigel's heart. When Nigel is arrested, Reggie must solve both the murder and the disappearance. The case pulls him between two cities, two crimes, and a love triangle that complicates every move. What began as a child's plea to a fictional detective becomes a puzzle that tests whether Reggie can match the deductive powers of the address's most famous occupant.

The Brothers of Baker Street is a mystery novel about two London lawyers who lease office space at 221B Baker Street and inherit an unusual obligation: answering letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes. Reggie and Nigel Heath are brothers who couldn't be more different, and while Reggie tries to focus on defending a Black Cab driver accused of murdering two American tourists, the Holmes letters keep piling up. One problem: Reggie is also distracted by actress Laura Rankin, the woman he loves, who is spending her time with media mogul Lord Buxton. Nigel adores her too. Then a letter arrives from someone claiming descent from Professor James Moriarty. As Reggie's murder case grows more tangled and the Moriarty letter hints at something larger, the brothers find themselves pulled into a puzzle that blurs the line between the detective work they've inherited and the case that's supposed to pay the rent. The question becomes whether two mismatched siblings can solve what even Holmes might have found baffling — and whether Reggie can untangle his personal life before it derails everything else.

Moriarty Returns a Letter is a mystery in which brothers Reggie and Nigel Heath, whose London law office sits at 221B Baker Street, must answer letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes. An exhibition of vintage Holmes correspondence has opened at the Marylebone Hotel, and Reggie is preparing for a pre-wedding trip with Laura. Then someone from the brothers' past — someone they believed was gone for good — reappears. The return brings a cascade of new problems. Whatever history the brothers share with this figure, it was supposed to stay buried, and the timing could not be worse. Reggie has a wedding to plan and an exhibition drawing attention to the very address that defines their unusual obligation. The brothers must now contend with a threat they thought they had escaped, and the question is whether the past they tried to leave behind will let them move forward at all.

Reggie Heath leases law offices at 221B Baker Street in London and answers mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes. Most of it is routine. Then an elderly American heiress announces she wants to leave her entire fortune to Holmes, a translator writes asking Holmes to explain a nursery rhyme, and Robert Buxton — Reggie's rival for the love of actress Laura Rankin — goes missing. The Baker Street Translation is a mystery that turns three strange requests into a single high-stakes puzzle. Reggie has until an upcoming British royal event to sort out what connects the heiress, the nursery rhyme, and Buxton's disappearance. If he fails, something catastrophic will happen to everyone at that event — and to Laura. The clock is running, the pieces refuse to fit, and the only way forward is to think like the detective whose mail Reggie has been reading for years.

Nigel Heath sleeps on the couch in his law office at 221B Baker Street, and when the Crown Court sends out jury summonses to every known occupant of that address, he receives one. So does Sherlock Holmes. The Baker Street Jurors is a mystery novel that drops Nigel into the jury pool for the trial of a sports hero accused of murder — a case that has the public divided and the court scrambling to fill its quota. Alongside Nigel are a young woman with a mysterious tattoo, an elderly widow whose mind is sharp as a blade, a millennial who corners the market on prescription drugs, and a tall man with an aquiline nose who will not explain how he got his summons. The trial begins, but the question of who will be chosen for the jury is only the first uncertainty. As the case unfolds, each prospective juror begins to wonder not only what verdict they will reach, but who among them will live long enough to deliver it.

A Baker Street Wedding is a mystery in which Reggie Heath's honeymoon turns into an interrogation of his new wife's secrets. The wedding of Reggie and actress Laura Rankin made the tabloids — which is to say, it was a disaster. Now Laura has piloted their plane to a remote village on the British coast, locked in by sea cliffs on one side and moors on the other, and Reggie cannot understand why she has chosen this forsaken hamlet for their honeymoon. Laura is keeping something from him, and the answers lie in her past. She refuses to explain. Reggie is out of his depth in a place that feels less like a romantic escape and more like a trap. He must find help, or his worst fears — and worse — will come true. The sixth book in the Baker Street Letters series, published in 2018, the novel turns a honeymoon into a reckoning with what a husband does not know about the woman he just married.

The Barrister's Clerk is a mystery novel that opens with a question: what happens to all the letters people still write to Sherlock Holmes? In London, those letters arrive at 221B Baker Street, where two barrister brothers lease the offices and inherit the correspondence meant for a detective who never existed. When the brothers take on the task of answering the mail, they find themselves pulled into real cases that echo the fictional ones — and some of those cases turn dangerous. This entry in the Baker Street Letters series, first published in 2018, follows the brothers as they navigate between legal work and the mysteries that arrive in envelopes addressed to a legend, discovering that the line between Holmes's world and their own is thinner than they thought.

Jack Wilgress has run out of options. Codettas is a science fiction novel set on the eve of the biggest conflict in human history, where three men face choices that will shape the war to come. Jack is broke, out of safe harbors, and every debt he ever owed is coming due just as the solar system tips into war. Rogan Hallard has spent his life trying to build unity between Gongen and Earth, but diplomacy has failed and war is inevitable. Higen Orochito has served the Gongen people all his life, but now the skies above his home fill with enemies and there are no easy choices left. Plans long in the work have either shattered or come to their dreadful climax. Jack must decide whether he will sink or swim. Rogan must choose whether he will be a healer or a hunter. Orochito's decisions may change the course of history itself. The song of war plays across the solar system, and the Battle of Phobos begins.