Anniyan what he perceives as social ills resulting from typical governmental inertia." In an interview with "The Hindu", Shankar elaborated on the message he conveys through the film: Following the release of the trailer on 7 May 2005, the film was believed to be inspired by the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novel, "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". Upon the film release, "The Hindu" drew parallels between it and the 1998 novel "Tell Me Your Dreams" by Sidney Sheldon. Shankar denied that the film was inspired by "Tell Me Your Dreams", claiming that he knew of the novel only
British literature "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1894). Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) also wrote works in this genre, including "Kidnapped" (1886), an historical novel set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and "Treasure Island" (1883), the classic pirate adventure. Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel "The Moonstone" (1868) is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language, and soon after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began his Sherlock Holmes series about a London-based "consulting detective". Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914. H. G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing