Winner of the Nero Wolfe Award
It is 1921 and Mary Russell—Sherlock Holmes's brilliant apprentice, now an Oxford graduate with a degree in theology—is on the verge of acquiring a sizable inheritance. Independent at last, with a passion for divinity and detective work, her most baffling mystery may now involve Holmes and the burgeoning of a deeper affection between herself and the retired detective. Russell's attentions turn

...

In 1919, Sherlock Holmes and his future wife Mary Russell are smuggled into Palestine under cover of darkness. Disguised as Arabs they foil a Turkish plot to regain control of Jerusalem from the British.

A young painter asks for help when his wife and child go missing. Mary finds herself on the trail of a very dangerous killer, one whom Sherlock might be protecting for reasons known only to him.

It is 1923. Mary Russell Holmes and her husband, the retired Sherlock Holmes, are enjoying the summer together on their Sussex estate when they are visited by an old friend, Miss Dorothy Ruskin, an archeologist just returned from Palestine. She leaves in their protection an ancient manuscript which seems to hint at the possibility that Mary Magdalene was an apostle--an artifact certain to stir up a storm of biblical proportions in the Christian establishment....

"It is not the custom for the commander of Special Branch to receive a royal summonsso Thomas Pitt knows it must be for a matter of the gravest importance. The body of Sir John Halberd, the Queen's confidant, has been found in the shallow water of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, bearing the evidence of a fatal blow to the head. At Her Majesty's request, Sir John had been surreptitiously investigating Alan Kendrick, a horse-racing enthusiast who seems...

Thomas Pitt arrives at a devastating bombing in Lancaster Gate to find two policemen dead and three more gravely wounded. London's anarchists are blamed, but as Pitt and Inspector Tellman investigate they find it looks increasingly like a personal vendetta against those particular men. Did they lie about a drugs raid that went fatally wrong, and let an innocent man hang? The idea of police dishonesty cuts Tellman to the quick--he joined the force...

"A queen, a castle, a dark and ageless threat--all await Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes in this chilling new adventure. The queen is Marie of Roumania: the doubly royal granddaughter to Victoria, Empress of the British Empire, and Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A famous beauty who was married at seventeen into Roumania's young dynasty, Marie had beguiled the Paris Peace Conference into returning her adopted country's long-lost provinces, single-handedly...

"As beautiful as it may be, their friends' country home is not where Lady Vespasia wishes to spend Christmas with her new husband, Victor Narraway. She'd rather pass a relaxing holiday at home with him--especially because Victor, former head of the London Special Branch, seems to be hiding some undercover dealings with the other guests who have gathered in the spacious home. As tensions grow among the couples, the young and beautiful Iris Watson-Watt...

Russell heads for Oxford to resume her long-delayed studies when she comes face-to-face with a young Japanese woman who is not all that she seems.