Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Vanishing Ledger: A Mystery Where Justice Wears a Different Face (The Baker Street Chronicles: A Collection of Sherlock Holmes Mysteries)

What vanishes from a locked room when no lock has been broken?

London, 1894. A black calfskin ledger—containing secrets that could topple some of the City’s most powerful men—has disappeared from the sealed strong-room of Blackthorn and Hale, one of the oldest banking houses in the Square Mile. The door shows no sign of forced entry. The single key never left the senior partner’s possession. And every employee claims an unassailable alibi.

When Edwin Hale arrives at 221B Baker Street, desperate and sleepless, Sherlock Holmes recognises at once that this is no ordinary theft. A fragment of unusual sealing wax, the faint impression of a book removed without haste, and a telegram dispatched under transposed initials lead Holmes and Dr. Watson into a web of institutional corruption, buried financial ruin, and a seven-year deception executed with breathtaking patience.

At the centre of it all stands Miss Lydia Carroway—chief clerk, meticulous record-keeper, and the most formidable adversary Holmes has encountered since his return from the continent. She is brilliant. She is invisible. And she has been waiting for this moment since the day she walked through the bank’s doors.

In a case where justice and crime walk so closely together that one scarcely knows where to draw the line, even the great detective must ask: what happens when the thief deserves the truth more than the victim deserves his secrets?