A DAZZLING CROWN!A DIABOLICAL CURSE! A DEADLY CASE FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES!Why is a grieving young woman targeted by those who seek to hear her father's final words revealed? Who is the grim, black-veiled Contessa? Can a war-wounded physician find love? Or is horror the only true solution?Dr. John Watson chronicles a most extraordinary adventure: one that encompasses a bewitched-and bewitching-travelling companion, an enigmatic noblewoman, and a doomed ship carrying a lethal cargo! Eerie visitants summoned during smoke-shrouded séances, a cabal of eccentric scholars seeking a fabled treasure of immense value-yet with a deadly cost, a love affair shaped amidst swirling shadows of intrigue, mystery and murder, monstrous idols of inhuman deities lurking in darkest depths, a cult of faceless assassins, an ancient malediction that brings madness and death to any who fall under its power: all must figure in a series of astounding deductions made by Sherlock Holmes, as the master detective pits his formidable wits against the horrors lurking in wait for any who dare trace 'the circle of blood'.From 221B Baker Street to the East End of London, from a crumbling priory to a loathsome insane asylum: the game is afoot upon the Devil's Crown's twisting and blood-soaked trail!Certain adventures of the great consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, have been withheld from the public gaze by Doctor Watson because the details are too scandalous, too personal-or so uncanny that their solutions skirt the borders of the shadowy realm of the supernatural."It was as part of this small collection of never-to-be-told tales that I had always sworn this current narrative belonged. But while I, so many years on, remain haunted by the cruel horror of the events-a horror which stretches back over several blood-soaked centuries--I could not happily live out whatever years I have remaining to me knowing that the full account of this most incredible adventure might one day die with me, thus denying the world the knowledge of how the singular skills of one man brought to a close the bloody tangle of events surrounding the cursed Corona del Diavolo-the Devil's Crown!"
