We are 40 years into the future, and London is a city in decay. John Watson has returned from medical service in the war in Afghanistan and lives by himself in a run-down part of ​town. On his way home from work, he stumbles upon a beaten man in the street – unconscious and completely naked. His chances of survival are minimal. The same evening, a passenger plane crashes in Richmond Park. There are several hundred victims, and Watson and the mysterious man are left to their own devices.

For all we know, or think we know, about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, what we don’t know is far, far greater. In the duo’s first case, A Study in Scarlet, we learn that Holmes and Watson met on January 1st, 1881, and subsequently moved into an apartment together at 221b Baker Street. Their first case officially began on March 4th of that year, and it is argued that “The Adventure of the Resident Patient” possibly took place in October of 1881, depending on which version of the story you read. But what happened during the rest of 1881? Or all of 1882?

The world was not prepared for this story, a conspiracy hatched in the highest levels of the British government. A rogue Minister of Defense plans to turn soldiers into blood-thirsty animals—and Holmes and Watson may be among their first victims. The adventure starts when Holmes is warned away from investigating Jack the Ripper’s heinous crimes. Despite Holmes’ well-known skills, he is sidelined. He must content himself with a straightforward case, finding a bolting beau, the result of a simple lovers’ quarrel. But that “romance gone wrong” is really the key to a nasty secret.

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are summoned to Theobald Grange, the Warwickshire home of Lady Heminworth. Being of a nervous and superstitious disposition, her Ladyship lives in fear. Her husband and elder son were recently murdered, apparently by the ghost of a court jester who was executed on the site centuries before. The apparition has warned that she, too, is to die. Holmes rejects a supernatural explanation, although his adversary seems unaffected by gunfire and is able to take flight and disappear.

A dazzling collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories, which sees the detective solving fiendish crimes, many involving methods beloved of Victorian murderers, poison by arsenic or cyanide, or even by venomous arachnids and reptiles. The colourful cast of characters includes villains bent on vengeance, traitorous revolutionaries, unfaithful and greedy wives wishing to rid themselves of their husbands, unfaithful and greedy husbands ditto, gullible widows, charming seducers, and captivating con artists out to fleece the innocent.