Checkmate! A Sherlock Holmes Novel

Christmas, 1895. Sherlock Holmes receives a strange package containing an opium-stained lady's handkerchief with the initials F.F. and a rabbit's foot. The following day he meets a prospective client, Fancy Fairways, a lovely young lady trying to save herself and her brother, Jack from evil forces.These two events plunge Holmes and his faithful friend and biographer Dr. Watson into a multi-faceted adventure that carries them all across London. A mysterious Dr. Steele is blackmailing the Fairways. Holmes learns the doctor may have ties to a drug ring. Meanwhile, Holmes's brother Mycroft seeks his help protecting a new secret weapon. But a ravishing femme fatale, Eve Corday threatens Mycroft. What is her connection to Dr. Steele?Holmes consults an expert in addictions at the Royal Society of Medicine, who recommends a sanatorium for young Jack. But soon after, the expert, Holmes, and Watson are all attacked. Then, there's an invitation to a masked ball from Eve Corday. Is it a trap?When Holmes reads coded messages in the newspaper about a man named 'X' he becomes suspicious. Is there a master hand at work behind the scenes? Could it be a ghost from his past? His long-dead nemesis come back from the dead? Or is Holmes nothing but a chess piece in a much larger game?The game's afoot in this rousing adventure Join Holmes and Watson as they travel from fog-bound lanes to glittering nightspots. From the highest echelons of government to the lowest dregs of human despair. Where sudden danger lurks, sometimes cloaked in opium-drenched dreams. By Mark Evan Walker, author of the Kelly Riggs Mysteries, and you won't want to miss it