Synopsis

The Crack in the Lens

Seventeen-year-old Sherlock Holmes returns to Yorkshire in the spring of 1871. He is glad to be able to wander about the moors on his horse but his father has other plans. He hires a tutor to prepare Sherlock for university. Meanwhile Sherlock has met a girl named Violet. Love and loss changes his world forever.

The Consulting Detective Trilogy Part I: University

It was some time before Sherlock Holmes recovered from the events of late 1871. With the assistance of Deacon Andrew Goble, his brothers Mycroft and Sherrinford, and the ever-devoted Jonathan Beckwith, Sherlock Holmes prepares himself to attend the University of Cambridge. However, two months after the term begins his life begins to unravel and Sherlock is forced to seek the assistance of an alienist named Dr. George Mackenzie. With Dr. Mackenzie's help Sherlock Holmes returns to his studies, but the most remarkable change will come to his life one spring morning when Victor Trevor's bull terrier latches itself upon his ankle. In the following weeks Holmes and Trevor become fast friends. Trevor's invitation to visit his family estate will result in Sherlock Holmes' first case and his resolution to become the world's first consulting detective. He enrolls in a class at Bart's that summer and modifies his studies at Cambridge in the autumn, bringing him into opposition with the college officials, the local police and eventually his own father. While training himself for his future career, Holmes solves a case to reclaim the honor of one student, save the life of another student, and rescue a number of fellow-students from the clutches of blackmailers.

The Consulting Detective Trilogy Part II: On Stage

Having been disowned by his father and sent down from university, Sherlock Holmes takes refuge with his brother Mycroft in London. A fellow-student who also had left introduces him to the magic of theatre. Holmes becomes a Shakespearean actor with the Corysian Company. He learns quickly and becomes a rising star, yet the theatre is beset with a number of accidents that the newspapers begin to call "The Curse of the Corysian." The theatre goes on tour in the United States but the curse seems to follow them. Holmes helps a police detective in New York City uncover police corruption and learns tracking techniques from a young Cheyenne warrior. In San Fransciso he rescues fellow actors from being shanghaied.

The Consulting Detective Trilogy Part III: Montague Street

Holmes returns to London determined to finally start his detective career. His case, however, involves murder and arson in the Corysian Theatre. Following hard on that he is hired by a solicitor to follow Scotland Yard detectives he believes are guilty of aiding criminals. Unfortunately after that start new case are slow in coming, so he finds a part-time job at a tobacco store where he will eventually write his great work on tobacco ash in the detecting of criminals. Hew also begins to walk the streets of London in disguise to learn the ways of the underworld. This leads him to the Blackheath Burglar. Former fellow-students and others begin bringing him cases involving an aluminium crutch, a wine merchant, the Tarletan murders, a lost opal tiara, a missing club-footed artist, and a golden idol. In the autumn of 1880 Mycroft moves to lodgings closer to Whitehall and Sherlock must decide whether to renew the lease on the flat in Montague Street or find other lodgings. He eventually finds rooms in Baker Street but he needs someone to go halfs with him. Stamford introduces him to a Dr. Watson recently invalided back from Afghanistan, and the rest is history.