1893. Henry James, a classic of American literature, is painfully going through a creative crisis. He arrives in Paris and, on a damp March night, tries to drown himself in the Seine—but an eccentric stranger saves him, calling himself Sherlock Holmes. He pulls James into a journey across America to unravel the mysterious suicide of an old acquaintance—one of the founders, an aristocratic club of Five Hearts. This story will include knife fights and international terrorism, secret signs and unexpected revelations—Beecher-Stowe and Professor Moriarty, as well as Kipling, Roosevelt, Poirot, Mark Twain, and many others: a whole constellation of invented characters and real celebrities. But one of the main mysteries is: who is he really—Holmes, a figure with a thousand faces, the man who, according to his own claims, doesn’t even exist? So, gentlemen, on the road! The game has begun!