For Mary Russell & her husband Sherlock Holmes returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad is a delicious anticipation. But the longed for sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a bitter memory from her husbands past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before but the talented & troubled young man is enlisting her help again this time in a desperate search for his missing wife & child. From suicides among the Standing Stones to a bizarre religious cult from the heart of Bohemian London to dark secrets on the streets of Shanghai Russell will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any shes ever faced
- a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near & dear to his heart.