The Diogenes Club is a series of short stories by British horror author Kim Newman, featuring the supernatural adventures of the titular club, a secret wing of the British government established to deal with extraordinary threats to the realm.[1]
The Diogenes Club stories initially appeared in a number of Newman anthologies alongside unrelated short stories and novellas, most notably Seven Stars,[2] and Dead Travel Fast.[3] Subsequently, they were collected into three core volumes exclusively featuring stories from the Diogenes Club setting: The Man from the Diogenes Club,[4] The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club,[5] and Mysteries of the Diogenes Club.[6] Other novels written by Newman which share the same fictional setting or have been incorporated into it via retroactive continuity include Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles, Angels of Music, The Secret of Drearcliff Grange School (spinning out of and expanding upon a story which first appeared in Mysteries of the Diogenes Club) and The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School.
The Diogenes Club originates in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", in which it is ostensibly a gentleman’s club; however, in Newman's stories it is implied that in reality it is a top secret element of the British Secret Service. Newman's stories take this implication as their premise, interweaving several generations of fictional characters and their supernatural adventures into real world events, allowing them to encounter a wide variety of historical characters, from Aleister Crowley to Margaret Thatcher. They also interact with elements from other fictional settings; for example, in "Seven Stars", the Diogenes Club encounters the Jewel of Seven Stars, which originates in the Bram Stoker novel of the same name.
Several of the Diogenes Club characters, as well as the club itself, appear in Newman's Anno Dracula novels, however these are different versions of the same characters living in a very different world, one overrun with vampires since Dracula's conquest of Great Britain.[7]