The Hounding
Publisher: The Fiction Works
Published: October 10, 1999
Format: CD-ROM
Number of pages: 236
ISBN-13: 9781581243147
Subjects: Mystery
First sentence: Cilla couldn't seem to shake the nightmare
Description: Tall, thin, androgynous Shirley Combs considers herself the world’s greatest living detective because she uses the methods and casebook of Sherlock Holmes to solve crimes of the gentry of the American city most closely resembling London, England -- in terms of the weather, at least.. Sidekick/narrator Dr. Mary Watson both delights in and is frustrated by her partner’s behavioral resemblance to Sherlock. Combs is unemotional, analytical, and given to pacing through the night in the streets of the almost perfectly livable city of Portland, Oregon. Her ability to observe details and understand their relationship to a case is unmatched; her demands on Watson’s time are too.
	Shirley Combs bills herself as the world’s greatest living detective, and why not? Taunted and teased as a child because her name sounded so much like Sherlock Holmes's, she developed an early obsession with the adventures and methods of Sherlock himself. She considered her fate sealed when she met up with Dr. Mary Watson. Shirley adds the technology of today to Holmes’s 100-year-old casebook and solves the mysteries of her much-beloved hometown. Mary Watson assists, and - of course - chronicles their exciting exploits. The planned series of novels incorporates and explores current events, types of people, social/economic situations that occur in Portland and the Pacific Northwest.
	In their first documented adventure, Shirley is hired by 19-year-old Goldenhawk Vandeleur to investigate her wealthy mother’s untimely death. Timber heiress Priscilla Vandeleur Leoni, direct descendant of Sir Charles Baskerville, decides to spend the family fortune saving the old-growth forests of Oregon. She is a product of the 1960’s ¬¬- former hippie and free-love advocate who gave birth out-of-wedlock, experimented with lesbian separatism, and married late. When faced with midlife, she tries to outrun her fears and give away her huge fortune. Haunted by a phobia of dogs, she is literally frightened to death by a pair of pit bulls.
	Goldenhawk suspects her step-father, Walter Leoni, somehow exploited Cilla’s phobia and unleashed the canines and caused her death. Shirley and Mary investigate. They learn that Walter’s upscale furniture business has been plagued with cashflow problems; these seem to coincide with visits from Tony Leoni, Cilla’s grown step-son who is a drug-addicted gambler. No shock is the fact that timber giant Levy Hawthorne has much to lose by Cilla’s plan to save the old growth and therefore much to gain by her death; but Shirley and Mary are surprised to learn that Cilla was actively involved in a love affair with her tax accountant Nancy Margaret.