Murder on Cold Street

Inspector Robert Treadles, one of Charlotte Holmes's closest collaborators at Scotland Yard, is found locked in a room with two dead men, both connected to the manufacturing firm his wife Alice has recently inherited. He won't explain himself, even as the case against him hardens: a motive tied to his wife's business decisions, rumors of jealousy over one of the dead men, and his own baffling silence.

Charlotte takes the case less as a puzzle to be solved than a debt to be paid, working through a snarl of buried resentments and half-truths at the manufacturing company to find out which lies are protecting small sins and which secrets are worth a man's freedom. All the while, Lord Ingram Ashburton, her oldest friend and sometime lover, is finally offering her the one thing she has always wanted, at the worst possible moment to accept it.

Fifth in the Lady Sherlock series, Murder on Cold Street pairs a tightly built locked-room case with the long-simmering question of what Charlotte and Ingram actually owe each other.