The year is 1923, and Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell receive a visit from Dorothy Ruskin, an amateur archaeologist. She presents them with a scrap of ancient writing that is supposedly Mary Magdalene's.

Soon afterwards, she is murdered — but why?

The third book in the Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes series, A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King is brimming with political intrigue, theological arcana, and brilliant Holmesian deductions. Russell and Holmes find themselves on the trail of a fiendishly clever murderer, while enjoying the summer together on their Sussex estate.