A Study in Crimson

LONDON, 1942.

A killer going by the name of 'Crimson Jack' is stalking the wartime streets of London, murdering women on the exact dates of the infamous Jack the Ripper killings of 1888. Has the Ripper somehow returned from the grave? Is the self-styled Crimson Jack a descendant of the original Jack or merely a madman obsessed with those notorious killings?

In desperation, Scotland Yard turns to Sherlock Holmes, the world's greatest detective. Surely he is the one man who can sift fact from legend and track down Crimson Jack before he completes his tally of death. As Holmes and the faithful Watson tread the blacked-out streets of London, death waits just around the corner.

Inspired by the classic film series from Universal Pictures starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, which updated Sherlock Holmes to the 1940s, this is a brand new adventure from the acclaimed author of The Thirty-One Kings, Castle Macnab and the Artie Conan Doyle Mysteries.

'In Aickman's fiction, peculiarity is intertwined with a drab twentieth-century realism that is very English and sometimes dryly funny. Think Philip Larkin, or Barbara Pym, gone eldritch.' – Anwen Crawford, The New Yorker

'His name should be placed among the greats – Flannery O'Connor, Irwin Shaw, Raymond Carver... You will never forget the first Aickman story you read, nor be satisfied when you've read them all.' – John Darnielle, author of Wolf in White Van