A string of murders threatens to draw Sherlock Holmes back into his past.

It has been too long since his last assignment, and Sherlock Holmes is beginning to come unglued. He stalks around his rooms at 221B Baker Street, too tense to work, and he is about to drive Dr. Watson up the wall when they are rescued by a knock at the door. It is Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard, and he has come to save Holmes - with a murder. A man has been found dead in Bayswater, slumped over a piece of homemade stationery marked with the words Jabez Wilson - the name of the victim in the long-solved mystery of the Red-Headed League. When Holmes enters the death room, the first thing he spies is the corpse’s flaming red hair. The old case is open again.

A series of bizarre crimes follow, each an imitation of one of Holmes’s greatest triumphs. Either Europe is in the grip of a madman - or the great detective has finally gone ‘round the bend.