The Mystery of Cloomber

MP3 Audio CD. Everybody knows Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, but what not everybody knows is that Doyle was fascinated not only with crime mysteries, but alos with ghosts and spirits ? towards the end of his life he became convinced that his wife was able to communicate with supernatural powers. The Mystery of Cloomber is a novel about the supernatural and divine justice ? though it is among Doyle?s earliest books, it is also an ingeniously written great story, just like so many other Conan Doyle novels, but unlike most of them, the conclusions he comes to in this story are not all very rational.

The story revolves around two families ? the Wests who move from Edinburgh to a mansion on a peninsula in Scotland and the Heatherstones who move into the previously abandoned mansion close to the house owned by the Wests. The narrator, John Fothergill West, recounts a dark and complicated mystery related to the Heatherstones ? Major-General Heatherstone, who used to serve in India some forty years before, is afraid his life is in grave danger and the family hides some sort of dark secret that becomes revealed by the end.

The novel is more a gothic mystery than a detective story ? as a matter of fact, there is hardly any detective work going on at all, but the events narrated all point towards the final outcome and truth is uncovered on its own eventually.

The Mystery of Cloomber is one of the few novels by Conan Doyle that does not feature Sherlock Holmes, but that aspect does not make it less valuable ? the story is full of mysteries, supernatural and paranormal events, all given to the reader in the fascinating style that make Conan Doyle?s pieces so special. Conan Doyle fans will surely recognize numerous elements that Conan Doyle elaborated on in his later novels.