You would be surprised, Sherlock Holmes says to his friend Dr Watson, what secret wickednesses lie behind seemingly ordinary occurrences. As they are speaking, a woman whose fiancé has disappeared comes to see the famous detective. Holmes hears her sad story and quickly sees that there is more to it than the narrator realises. As the vivid and easy-to-read tale unfolds, the author skilfully leads us into a spellbinding world of greed, cruelty and deception.