The First Noel

1919. Great Britain has just been through one of her greatest tests: A four-year global war that has left a million of her young men dead, and another million-and-a-half wounded – some horribly for life. The surviving soldiers were shaken by a new kind of war with vile poison gas attacks and never-before used technology. At home, the social order has been overturned, with a population still reeling from years of Zeppelin and bomber attacks and brutal shortages and rationing. Now the country at “peace” is wracked by riots, strikes, military mutinies, and violence everywhere.

Meanwhile, SOLAR PONS, who spent the war working in England’s Cryptology Department, begins the year by resuming his private consulting detective practice at 7B Praed Street, while in June, Dr. Lyndon Parker returns to a much-changed England after decades abroad – most recently his own harrowing war service in Egypt.

Both are unknowingly on course for an unexpected meeting in a Praed Street pub that will change their lives forever, and form a friendship that will be invaluable toward the righting of wrongs, from the tumultuous year of 1919 onward….

Solar Pons: A Year of Mystery 1919 contains 20 new Solar Pons stories, along with supplemental material by August Derleth, stretching throughout the year: From early days just after the war’s end, when Pons is reestablishing his Praed Street practice, to his first meeting with Dr. Parker, and so on to December, when their adventures – and friendship – are settled upon a firm footing… as the country is beginning to achieve that state as well.