Once again Arthur Conan Doyle presents a series of cases which baffle the police, but are no match for Sherlock Holmes and his trusty companion, Dr. Watson. In "Black Peter", the peace of rural Sussex is disturbed by the discovery of a seafarer's body pinned to the wall of his hut with a harpoon. In the "Golden Pince-Nez", a young man is found dead clutching a pair of spectacles, yet he had perfect sight.
In the year 1780, Harriet Westerman, the willful mistress of a country manor in Sussex, finds a dead man on her grounds with a ring bearing the crest of Thornleigh Hall in his pocket. Not one to be bound by convention or to shy away from adventure, she recruits a reclusive local anatomist named Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer, and historical suspense's newest investigative duo is born.