Sherlock Holmes: The Adler Cipher 1881 An Early Case

The Adler Cipher London, 1881. A cipher no one can break. A woman Sherlock Holmes cannot forget. When a seemingly meaningless sequence of letters and numbers finds its way to 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes immediately recognises something others have missed. The message is not merely encrypted-it has been constructed for a very particular reader. For him. Hidden within the cipher is a name that stirs memories of one of the few people ever to truly challenge Holmes: Irene Adler. But Adler has vanished, and the trail she leaves behind leads Holmes and Dr John Watson through the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London, from elegant drawing rooms and private clubs to gambling dens, railway platforms and the hidden world beneath the respectable face of the capital. Each solution reveals another puzzle. Each clue suggests that someone has been watching Holmes far longer than he realised. And as a series of apparently unrelated deaths begins to form a disturbing pattern, Holmes discovers that the cipher is more than a message. It is a warning. Someone is preparing to commit a crime whose consequences could reach far beyond London-and Irene Adler may be the only person who knows the truth. But is she asking Sherlock Holmes for help? Or leading him into a trap? The Adler Cipher is the first novel in a new series of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, combining deduction, conspiracy, danger and Victorian intrigue in a case designed to test the world's greatest detective.