A thrilling chase as Sherlock Holmes is sent a fiendish puzzle by Irene Adler over a snowy London Christmas, in this stunningly packaged mystery

Sherlock Holmes’s discovery of a mysterious musical score initiates a devious Christmas challenge set by Irene Adler, with clues that are all variations on the theme of “theft without theft,” such as a statue missing from a museum found hidden in the room it was taken from.

In the snowy London lead-up to Christmas, Holmes’s preoccupation with the “Adler Variations” risks him neglecting the case of his new client, Norwegian arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who has received a series of threats in the form of animal carcasses left on his doorstep. Could they really be gifts from a strange spirit that has pursued Nansen since the completion of his expedition to cross Greenland? And might this case somehow be related to Irene Adler’s great game?

Sherlock Holmes delves into the world of early cinema as motion picture groundbreaker Eadweard Muybridge begs him to solve a mystery that will keep you up all night.

1896. A new client at Baker Street claims he’s being threatened via the new art of the moving image …

Eadweard Muybridge, pioneer of motion picture projection, believes his life is in danger. Twice he has been almost run down in the street by the same mysterious carriage, and moreover, disturbing alterations have been made to his lecture slides. These are closely guarded, yet just before each lecture an unknown hand has defaced images depicting Muybridge himself, which he has discovered, to his horror, only as he projects them to his audience. As Holmes and Watson investigate, a bewildering trail of clues only deepens the mystery, and meanwhile, newspaper speculation reaches fever pitch. The great detective’s reputation is on the line, and may be ruined for good unless he can pick apart a mystery centered on the capturing, for the first time, of figures in motion, and the wonders of the new cinematograph.