Born in 1968, Fabrice Bourland has worked extensively in the magazine and publishing world and is a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe. The Baker Street Phantom is his first fantasy crime novel.

'My writing is a combination of detective and fantasy fiction. Having said that, I am merely reviving a subgenre of crime fiction that was very popular in the past, that of detectives of "the strange" or "the occult" if you like, of which William Hope Hodgson, Algernon Blackwood or Seabury Quinn were the most celebrated exponents. The subgenre is connected to the origins of detective fiction. We mustn't forget that the latter genre was created in the 1840s by a certain ... Edgar Allan Poe, unquestionably the master of fantasty writing too'

When writing The Baker Street Phantom I used Victorian maps of London which I pinned  up all around my desk. From the moment I woke up in the morning I immersed myself in Whitechapel, Limehouse or Marylebone. I didn't want to go on a recce to London. Modern London is of little interest to me. What I wanted to know about was the London of the imagination, etched indelibly on the collective unconscious of readers, the London of the 1880's of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Mr Hyde and others ...'  

from an interview published by fantasienet.com