336 pages |Paperback

At a time when Sherlock Holmes is more popular than ever, a new story written in the whip smart style of Conan Doyle but with the ticking clock and fast pace that modern readers expect.

Its 1888. A perfumed letter featuring a doubly encoded message arrives at 221B Baker street London, a snowy December, 1888. A disastrous Ripper investigation has left 35-year-old Sherlock Holmes in a deep depression and back on cocaine. The newly married Watson is summoned urgently to 221B to rouse his friend. Nothing works until the arrival of an intriguing encoded letter from a beautiful French singer, Mlle. Emmeline La Victoire. Her illegitimate son Emil (with the famous art collector and humanitarian Earl of Pellingham) has disappeared and she fears him kidnapped, and she herself has been accosted in the street.As they travel to Paris to come to her aid, a larger picture is unveiled. This same untouchable Earl may well be behind the worlds largest art theft – the priceless Marseilles Nike – and additionally the disappearance and murder of several boys working in his own silk mills. Could he have harmed his own son as well? Holmes and Watson are tasked to solve the case and bring the culprit to justice.Before they can succeed, they must navigate a complex web including a treacherous French rival detective, Vidocq, who is in love with their client; Sherlocks oddly threatening brother Mycroft, who has his own stake in the case; and a rising tide of murders which keep the true facts just out of reach. Can Sherlock Holmes overcome the weaknesses of his own artistic nature to save the beautiful singer and her son, and put away the real villain behind these many crimes?