It is 1917 and the Great War has been raging for three long years. Mycroft Holmes grows suspicious of one of his agents who reports back to him from the heart of the Ottoman Empire: Constantinople. Naturally, he wants to send out a man to investigate—one who knows the area, the language, the people, and has an exemplary war service record, including a fourteen-month stint posing as a German officer at the High Command in Berlin. But Sherlock Holmes proves to be, for once, stubbornly reluctant to fulfill his older brother's request. When Mycroft is shot and left for dead, Sherlock Holmes is forced to go to Constantinople to uncover the man behind the deed. Unfortunately, before he was assassinated, Mycroft failed to communicate which agent was the turncoat. So begins Holmes' reluctant return to the Near East. Not only does the adventure provoke a bagful of memories both bitter and sweet, but the hunt for the agent who betrayed them unravels with twists and turns and breath-robbing surprises that even Holmes, with all his skills, could never have anticipated. (back cover)