This novel is a Sherlock Holmes mystery set against the backdrop of 1890's England . . . one of the most intriguing and contradictory eras in human history. Their nation's scholars produced literature, art and music to the wonderment of humankind as twenty thousand abandoned, homeless children roamed their nation's capitol. Ten thousand more toiled fourteen-hour days in wretched factories. Seven hundred of one thousand poor children died before the age of five. In such an unjust society Holmes confronts the exploitation, enslavement and murder of children in an underworld of perverse corruption that extends from unimaginable working conditions in factories to flesh merchants of the Middle East to the highets levels of English government. Holmes is driven to the edge of madness as he examines the desperate lives of factory children attempting to survive a web of corrupt politicans, factory owners and an indifferent society.