The numerous followers of Larry Millett's extraordinary Sherlockian series will be thrilled to find Holmes's American consort, Irish saloonkeeper Shadwell Rafferty, taking his first crack at a case that looks like it might send a whole city government tumbling. Rafferty, large hearted and massively built, has a talent for logic, dissimulation, bribery, and action that is surpassed only by his love of "the detectin' game". On the eve of President McKinley's visit in 1899 to Minneapolis, a gruesome crime draws Rafferty from St. Paul to the booming city across the river.

A young union activist has been found, strung naked from a tree outside a ruined mansion. A placard around his neck bears the ominous words the alliance has spoken. Rafferty plunges into the case with his usual gusto, but finds more questions than answers. Was the murder the work of the union-busting Citizens Alliance or wild-eyed anarchists? Was the victim linked to an empire of corruption controlled by the city's slippery mayor? And how did the young man come to posses a photograph of a prominent citizen engaged in sexual congress? As the puzzle deepens and the dangers mount, Rafferty is joined by his old friends Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.
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SHERLOCK HOLMES DISAPPEARS, POLICE SUSPECT FAMED DETECTIVE IN KIDNAPPING AND MURDER reads a New York headline. So begins the fifth mystery in Larry Millett's series.A letter, written in a secret cipher he recognizes all too well, reveals that an old foe of Holmes-a murderer he once captured after an incredible duel of wits-is back, has kidnapped his previous victim's widow, and is now impersonating Holmes himself. Holmes must once again match wits with a particularly cunning adversary, one whose hatred of Holmes has seemingly become the killer's single greatest obsession.Chasing the kidnapper from London to New York to Chicago, Holmes and Watson race to keep up. Every move Holmes makes is expected; every trap proves elusive. Only with the assistance of his American cohort, the saloonkeeper Shadwell Rafferty, can Holmes hope to settle the score once and for all-or be framed for the crime himself.

Sherlock Holmes is bored between cases at 221B Baker Street. So when King Oskar II of Sweden-who has heard of the discovery of the Kensington Rune Stone by a farmer in Minnesota-asks to engage his services, Holmes jumps at the chance to decipher the runes and determine whether the find is real or a hoax. With Dr. John H. Watson by his side, faithfully recording every detail, Holmes makes his way to Minnesota for a third time. But, in the first of many strange and unfortunate coincidences, the farmer who found the mysterious stone is murdered, and the stone itself is stolen on the day the famous detective arrives.With the help of one Shadwell Rafferty, now a friend and partner, Holmes must solve this baffling case to find both the stone and the murderer.

In the summer of 1994, a workman at the historic mansion of railroad baron James J. Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumbles on a long-hidden wall safe. When experts arrive to open the safe and examine its contents, they make an astonishing discovery. There, inside, is a handwritten manuscript bearing the signature of John H. Watson, M.D.

The manuscript contains the story of how Sherlock Holmes and Watson traveled to Minnesota to track a murderous arsonist—known only as the Red Demon—who is threatening both Hill and his Great Northern Railway. Set against the backdrop of the real, devastating Hinckley forest fire of 1894, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon is the tense and atmospheric first novel in Larry Millett’s classic series of adventures that brought Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to Minnesota.

The year is 1896, and St. Paul’s magnificent Winter Carnival is under way when Holmes and Watson are summoned by the city’s most powerful man, railroad magnate James J. Hill. A wealthy young man disappears on the eve of his wedding—and his fiancée suspiciously discards her wedding dress. After a grisly discovery in the carnival’s Ice Palace leads to a flurry of clues, Holmes is on the case. His pursuit of the murderer takes him through the highest echelons of St. Paul society and into cahoots with Shadwell Rafferty, a gregarious saloonkeeper and part-time private investigator. Soon Holmes, Watson, and Rafferty are embroiled in a perilous adventure that takes them from one frozen corner of the city to another and out onto the treacherous ice of the Mississippi River as they trail a cruel and ruthless killer.