London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is normally languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither ease and comfort nor rouse his friend – until a strangely encoded letter occurs from Paris.

Mlle La Victoire, a lovely People from france cabaret star writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

Racing to Paris with Watson at his aspect, Holmes discovers the missing about Art in the Blood child is the tip of the iceberg of a much larger issue. The most valuable statue since the Winged Victory has been violently stolen in Marseilles, and several children from a silk mill in Lancashire have been found murdered. The hints in every three cases indicate an individual, untouchable man.

Will Holmes recover with time to get the missing boy and stop a increasing tide of murders? To take action he must stay one step ahead of an unhealthy French rival and the threatening interference of his own brother, Mycroft.

This latest adventure, in the design of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sends the iconic duo from London to Paris and the icy wilds of Lancashire within a case which tests Watson’s friendship as well as the fragility and gifts of Sherlock Holmes’ own artistic nature to the limits.