The Problem of the Missing Miss

By the English seaside, two literary legends team up to find a young lady who has disappeared

Once a playground for the British nobility, by the mid-1880s Brighton has become a haven for middle-class vacationers. Shabbier than it was, and darker around the edges, it is nonetheless a fitting place for a young doctor’s honeymoon. But no sooner has Arthur Conan Doyle stepped off the train than he encounters a mystery. A teenage girl has vanished from the railway terminal, and the elderly Reverend Dodgson—better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll—is searching for her. Doyle will do whatever it takes to rescue the missing miss from the clutches of a coastal criminal, even if it means putting his honeymoon in danger.

In Sherlock Holmes and Alice in Wonderland, Arthur Conan Doyle and Lewis Carroll created two of Victorian England’s most remarkable characters, but neither could ever have imagined the trouble they would find on Brighton Pier.