Rising War Office star Mycroft Holmes persuades his brother, Sherlock, to volunteer at a friend's orphanage, where the suspicious death of a street urchin and a mysterious Chinese woman lead the brothers into the London opium trade's dark underside.

"It is 1873, and Mycroft Holmes is in service to the Crown once again. A distant relative of Queen Victoria has been slain by the Fire Four Eleven killer, a serial murderer who leaves no mark upon his victims. Mycroft allows Sherlock to take the case, as he has been asked to find a missing person--the fiance of the woman he loves. As Sherlock travels the country on the hunt for a murderer, both he and Mycroft will discover that the greed of others is at the root of the evil they are trying to unearth."