The Sign of Ten

Victorian England, Portsmouth. At Clarendon House, a "rest home for gentlemen with shattered nerves," a new lodger arrives — Charles Dodgson, already famous as Lewis Carroll, the author of "Alice in Wonderland," — and his nerves are indeed very frayed.... Charles Dodgson is plagued by ominous dreams — his own characters prophesy blood, death, and disasters of an unclear nature for him and his acquaintances, and these predictions come true again and again. Who to turn to with such a mystery, if not Mr. X, who understands the motives behind any human actions? This blind and mad anchorite, a singer of rationality, the prototype of Sherlock Holmes, uncovers terrifying secrets without leaving his room, solely through the power of deduction — but how will his new encounter with the "Union of Ten" end?
José Carlos Somoza is a brilliant Spanish writer, whose novels have been translated into several dozen languages, a laureate of the "Golden Dagger" award and holder of many other literary accolades, a creator of multilayered worlds where very terrible deeds take place, author of fantastic, philosophical, historical thrillers and horrors. In "The Sign of Ten," a sequel to "A Study in Black Shades," the infernally insightful Mr. X and his loyal, ironic, strong, and sensitive nurse Anne McCary return, alongside them are involved actors, stagehands, and audiences of brutal underground theaters, renowned psychiatrists and, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle.