Historical Traditional Detectives

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating. In an audacious attack, the London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, causing many casualties. Planned with military precision, this crime proves a challenge to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck who fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction.

On a cold February night in Regency London, a dark curtain falls on the Sans Pareil Theatre following the death of April Clare, a promising young actress, whose body is found in mysterious circumstances. Detective Stephen Lavender and his dependable deputy, Constable Woods, quickly discover that nothing is quite as it seems. As successive mysteries unfold, they soon realise that it is not only the actors from the Sans Pareil who are playing a part.

London, 1812: Treacherous gangs roam the capital, and not even the Palace of Westminster is safe. When Detective Stephen Lavender is called in to investigate a highway robbery and a cold-blooded murder, both the cases take a dangerous and disturbing personal twist.

When the engines finally met, there was a deafening clash and the Brighton Express twisted and buckled, tipping its carriages on to the other line. It was a scene of utter devastation. October 1854. As crowds of passengers rush to make the departure of the London to Brighton Express, a man watches from the shadows nearby, grimly satisfied as the train pulls out of the station. Chaos, fatalities and unbelievable destruction are the scene soon after when the train derails on the last leg of its journey.

Irene Adler, American opera singer and the one woman who outsmarted Sherlock Holmes, finds herself a widow at thirty-two, wealthy but emotionally broken. At the same time, Sherlock Holmes finds himself unable to return to England after faking his death at Reichenbach Falls and is drawn into an investigation of two men with designs on a woman they call Miss A, who is none other than Irene Adler herself. The Detective and The Woman throw their lot in together to uncover a dangerous plot with implications that stretch across the Atlantic. In the process, they meet legendary inventor Thomas Edison and experience life in Florida at the turn of the 20th century.

"Was haben wir denn da Feines?" "Eine Tote auf dem Friedhof, Sir." "Ach, gehört die nicht genau da hin?" "Das schon, aber sechs Fuß tiefer, Sir." "Ein Unfall?", fragte Merridew unschuldig. "Wohl kaum, Sir. Es sei denn, die Dame ist versehentlich in die Flugbahn einer Großwildpatrone gestolpert." Dieser übergewichtige Snob kann bisweilen eine richtige Nervensäge sein. Trotzdem ist Reginald Lord Merridew unbestritten einer der klügsten Köpfe Englands.

An anonymous telegram introduces Carl Brooke to both his future wife and her conflicted brother, who harbors a dark secret from the Civil War. The discovery of a deliberately cut tree reveals the presence of a mysterious one-legged man and the possible reemergence of Carl's nemesis, Thomas Drake.