Emily Watson lives in a quaint English manor house with her twin sister, confined to a 20-mile radius around the estate for reasons she has never known. When the mysterious Professor Moriarty comes to visit and her sister goes missing, she discovers she is the half-sister of Dr. John Watson.

Traveling to London to meet him, she finds that he is the biographer and flatmate of famed consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, in whom Professor Moriarty has expressed a sinister interest.

Soon after her arrival, Emily becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of a Russian diplomat, which could cause political havoc if the culprit is not quickly brought to justice. The case has ties to her past, and a curious thread throughout that threatens to topple the already precarious balance of Europe's empires.

This short novel is a revolutionary re-introduction to a universe that has been the object of fascination for over a hundred years, and promises a series full of diverse circumstances and many twists and turns before the final problem is addressed.