Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes are back in Laurie R.
King's highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling mystery
series. And this time the first couple of detection pair up to
unlock the buried memory of a shocking crime with the power to kill
again --- lost somewhere in Russell's own past.

After departing Bombay by ship, Mary Russell and her husband
Sherlock Holmes are en route to the bustling modern city of San
Francisco. There, Mary will settle some legal affairs surrounding
the inheritance of her family's old estate. But the closer they get
to port, the more Mary finds herself prey to troubling dreams and
irrational behavior --- a point not lost on Holmes, much to
Russell's annoyance.

In 1906, when Mary was six, San Francisco was devastated by an
earthquake and a raging fire that reduced the city to rubble. For
years, Mary has denied any memory of the catastrophe that for days
turned the fabled streets into hell on earth. But Holmes suspects
that some hidden trauma connected with the "unforgettable"
catastrophe may be the real culprit responsible for Mary's memory
lapse. And no sooner do they begin to familiarize themselves with
the particulars of the Russell estate than it becomes apparent that
whatever unpleasantness Mary has forgotten, it hasn't forgotten
her. Why does her father's will forbid access to the house except
in the presence of immediate family? Why did someone break in, then
take nothing of any value? And why is Russell herself targeted for
assassination?

The more questions they ask of Mary's past, the more people from
that past turn out to have died violent, unexplained deaths. Now,
with the aid of a hard-boiled young detective and crime writer
named Hammett, Russell and Holmes find themselves embroiled in a
mystery that leads them through the winding streets of Chinatown to
the unspoken secrets of a parent's marriage and the tragic car
"accident" that a fourteen-year-old Mary alone survived --- an
accident that may not have been an accident at all. What Russell is
about to discover is that even a forgotten past never dies...and it
can kill again.

© Copyright 2005 by Bantam, a division of Random House,
Inc.