1890s San Francisco. Former Pinkerton operative Sabina Carpenter and her detective partner, ex-Secret Service agent John Quincannon, tackle two seemingly unrelated cases that are complicated by two murders and the interference of Sherlock Holmes.

Conducting a dual investigation in the opium dens of Chinatown, Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon search for missing millionaires against a backdrop of a brewing tong war. By the award-winning authors of The Bughouse Affair.

For the firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, stopping extortionists is not only grand, but excitingly lucrative. When a pleasant afternoon's bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention.The questions her partner John Quincannon has to unravel...

Carpenter and Quincannon Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new century. Sabina and John will protect their clients, doing what is necessary to run the dregs of society into the arms of the law. Sometimes that involves brute force. Other times, a more subtle touch is needed. Professor A. Vargas, medium extraordinaire, and his partner, Annabelle, don't use picks to open locked doors, and most certainly don't...

Quincannon's pursuit of two con men who have absconded to Hawaii with a considerable sum of his employer's assets dovetails nicely with Sabina's vision of a second honeymoon. But neither is wont to stay out of trouble, and Sabina inadvertently becomes involved in a locked room/dying message murder in Honolulu.