Cirrus@Austlit

'A solitary spy slips into Turkey during World War I, to tangle with the German apparatus and find his brother’s killer.

'It is 1917 and the Great War has been raging for three long years.

'Mycroft Holmes grows suspicious of one of his agents in Constantinople. Naturally, he wants to send a man to investigate who knows the language, the people and has an exemplary war record, including fourteen months posing as a German officer in Berlin. But Sherlock Holmes proves to be, for once, stubbornly unwilling to fulfill his older brother’s request.

'When Mycroft is shot and left for dead, Holmes is forced to Constantinople to uncover the man behind the deed. Unfortunately, before he was assaulted Mycroft failed to communicate which agent was the turncoat.

'So begins Holmes’ reluctant return to the Near East. Not only does the adventure provoke a bagful of memories both bitter and sweet but the hunt for the agent who betrayed them unravels with breath-robbing surprises that even Holmes with all his skills could never have anticipated.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When Sherlock Holmes was at the peak of his success he disappeared, abruptly, for three years. Dr. Watson believed him to be dead. No-one knows what happened to him in those years...until now.

'Watson takes up his pen one last time to describe in a private memoir the true tale of Holmes' adventures during his three-year absence from Baker Street, and provides a fictional explanation for many of the mysteries and inaccuracies found with the Sherlock Holmes collection of stories and novels.

'The answers come in the shape of a woman - Elizabeth Sigerson. Elizabeth is independent, practical, a crack shot with a pistol, and definitely not a woman of her time. Elizabeth is embroiled in Holmes' life at a time when Holmes is building his scheme to expose Moriarty. She can more than hold her own against Holmes' abilities, but she has a secret that Holmes is compelled to solve.' (Author's synopsis)