For Mary Russell and 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 husband's past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, but the talented and troubled young man is enlisting her help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and 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 she's ever faced - a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart.