When one of Minnesota’s wealthiest scions goes missing, it’s up to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to monitor a cold-blooded killer.

The entire year is 1896, and the magnificent winter carnival is under way in St. Paul, Minnesota, when Holmes and Watson are summoned from the city’s most powerful man, railroad magnate Adam J. Hill. A wealthy young man provides disappeared for the eve of his wedding-and his fiancée suspiciously discards her bridal dress. After a grisly discovery in the carnival’s ice palace about Sherlock Holmes as well as the Ice Palace Murders: A Minnesota Secret Featuring Shadwell Rafferty prospects to a flurry of hints, Holmes is over the case.

His quest for the murderer takes him through the best echelons of St. Paul society and into cahoots with Shadwell Rafferty, a gregarious saloon owner and part-time private investigator. Soon Holmes, Watson, and Rafferty are embroiled inside a perilous experience that will take them in one freezing corner of the city to another and out onto the treacherous snow of the Mississippi River as they trail a cruel and ruthless killer.

“Millett’s Holmes is a good look-alike of Conan Doyle’s initial, but the true triumph here’s Rafferty, who lighting up each scene in which he appears, adding a distinctively American jump to a solid, complex mystery distinguished by its vibrant portrayal of nineteenth-century St. Paul. Holmes fans may feel absolve to suggestion their deerstalkers.”-Publishers Weekly