Days after the encounter at the Swiss waterfall that claimed the lives of Sherlock Holmes and criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty, Pinkerton detective agent Frederick Chase and Scotland Yard Inspector Athelney Jones, a devoted student of Holmes's methods of investigation and deduction, must track down a sinister figure who is determined to stake his claim as Moriarty's successor.

London, 1943. Across the city, prominent figures in science and the military are bursting into flame and being incinerated. Convinced that the Germans have deployed a new terror weapon, a desperate government turns to the one man who can track down the source of this dreadful menace--Sherlock Holmes. The quest for a solution drives Holmes into an uneasy alliance with the country's most brilliant scientific genius, Professor James Moriarty. Only Sherlock...