In 1867, Sherlock Holmes, an impoverished young outcast with a Jewish father and a highborn mother, visits the scene of a woman's brutal murder, where he meets a wrongly accused young Arab and becomes a suspect himself.

Desperate to prove himself as a master detective, young Sherlock Holmes searches the countryside, coast, and other haunted locals of Victorian England to recover the young socialite who vanished from Hyde Park.

Young Sherlock Holmes helps his friend, Irene, celebrate her sixteenth birthday in the summer of 1869 by taking her to see the latest sensation to hit London--the magician, Alistair Hemsworth, promises to make a real dragon appear on stage--but before the act, Hemsworth is arrested for the murder of his rival, and though he has motive, Sherlock is not convinced he is guilty.