Critiques of Davies book can be found here:
https://answersingenesis.org/charles-darwin/there-is-no-darwin-conspiracy/
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2009/01/06/darwin-worship-and-demonisatio/
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123060404325341583?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123060404325341583.html
It would be interesting to know if Davies has replied to these critiques.
I would also like to know if Davies looked in the London papers to confirm the mail ships containing Wallace's letters arrived on time. The papers would have articles written from dispatches on the same ship. Davies makes it sound like Darwin's claims of late delivery are obvious lies, so why wouldn't contemporaries, even Wallace, be suspicious if it was such an obvious lie?
You can find any number of articles about mail delivered late by searching on the internet.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=mail delivered years later
From Davies (he's on vacation until late July... hemay add more comments when he returns)
Apart from the Book I have written two controversial articles for the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London. The first was published in January 2012 as a response to claims by John van Wyhe that Wallace's letter to Darwin sent from Ternate on March 9th 1858 not only did not get onto the mail packet on that day but did not leave Ternate for another month. This then allowed Van Wyhe to claim that when it did leave Ternate on April 5 1858 sheer coincidence had the mail arrive on mainland Java (Surabaya) on the very day a boat from a rival firm left that port for Singapore. He then claimed that it was this ship that took Wallace's letter to Singapore to meet the P+O liner which left Singapore at the beginning of May which allowed Darwin insist the letter arrived at his home in the middle of June 1858. Hence his letter that same day to Lyell claiming Wallace's letter had just arrived.
It had been intended, and agreed with the Editor of the Linnean Journal, that Van Wyhe's article and my own rebuttal should be printed side by side in a future edition of the Journal since my objections to Van Wyhe's lack of evidence was so strong. However, fate interceded and Van Wyhe's was printed one month before my own thereby allowing every Darwin fan to claim that their hero had been vindicated and was not guilty of the charge of lying about when Wallace's letter reached his home. By the time my response had been published it made virtually no impression on the minds of anyone interested in this subject.
However, on July 1, last year another article was published under my name in the BJLS. This not only revealed that Van Wyhe's claims were false by proving - with documented evidence - that two different companies were involved in delivering and collecting mail between the islands of the archipelago and Singapore in 1858.
One shipping line always carried the mail arriving at Singapore for delivery to the Malay Archipelago but never carried mail from the archipelago back to Singapore.
The second shipping line always carried the mail from the islands to Singapore but never carried mail from Singapore to the islands.
In order to get Darwin off the hook Van Wyhe made the first shipping company not only take the mail to the islands but also made that same line responsible for the mail from the islands getting back to Singapore.
Any amateur researcher would be able to spot the error in Van Wyhe's analysis of what happened. The fact that no one with an open mind has gone back to check my research for faulty interpretation - or might have done but kept quiet about their findings - only makes me feel that it is only a question of time before an independent academic with some standing in the field does exactly that.
Professor Janet Browne of Harvard University, the principle biographer of Charles Darwin, is on record as having told Christopher Hitchens the British writer before his death that - and here I am paraphrasing - if there was one question she wished she knew the answer to it would be the exact date on which Wallace's letter from Ternate had arrived at Darwin's home in Kent. This interview was published shortly before Van Wyhe's claim in December, 2011, that that letter had arrived in the middle of June and not at the beginning of the month which I had claimed. This allowed Hitchens to refer back to his discussion with Prof Browne and then confidently claim that the true date of arrival of that letter had been settled once and for all by John van Wyhe. Whether Hitchens read, or had a chance to read, my response is unknown. And as far as I know, apart from Hitchens' article Prof Browne has never voiced, publicly, her concerns about when the letter arrived.
You can use the above as an answer to some of the critics on your forum if you wish.