Holmes Is Missing

This novel follows three private investigators in New York City whose names echo those of famous fictional detectives. At two a.m., Auguste Poe and Margaret Marple race across the Williamsburg Bridge after Poe receives an urgent call from his lover, NYPD Detective Lieutenant Helene Grey. She leads them to St. Michael's Hospital, a prestigious Lower East Side medical center, where six newborn babies have been stolen from the maternity nursery. The firm's third partner, Brendan Holmes, is absent, undergoing treatment for a decades-long heroin addiction at a rehab facility near Ithaca, New York.

Captain Graham Duff, the new head of the Major Case Squad, tries to eject the investigators, but the parents recognize Poe and Marple from a prior case and demand to hire them. Sterling Cade, a wealthy father, retains the firm on behalf of all six families. Marple discovers the electronic ankle bands on the babies are counterfeits that failed to trigger alarms. Poe finds the nursery cameras were disabled for exactly two minutes, with only one older camera capturing a partial image of a box truck. Grey then takes Poe aside and tells him she is pregnant with his child.

Poe and Marple drive to retrieve Holmes from rehab. During the trip, Marple discovers that four infants have also vanished from a London hospital in a parallel kidnapping the British authorities are keeping quiet. Holmes appears healthy at the facility but turns sullen on the drive home. Back in Brooklyn, he tells Marple his investigative instincts are "shot" and announces his resignation. Marple searches dark-web adoption sites and theorizes the babies were taken as merchandise, not for ransom. Holmes reluctantly agrees to attend one task force meeting for Grey's sake and declares there will be no ransom calls: The babies are commodities, not hostages.

At St. Michael's, Dr. Revell Schulte, head of the maternity unit, grants the investigators access. They identify Keelin Dale, a licensed practical nurse who handled all the babies and failed to report for her shift. Poe and Marple track Dale to Newark Airport, where she is boarding a flight to Morocco, a country without an extradition treaty. Dale confesses that someone exploited her addiction to Halcion, a highly addictive sedative, offering a lifetime supply in exchange for inside information about the nursery's security. Dale communicated with the woman via disposable phones and never learned her identity. Grey arrives with police and takes Dale into custody.

Holmes visits a bar near St. Michael's and meets Dr. Callie Brett, a pediatrics resident who recently quit over the hospital's pending acquisition by HavenCare, a massive healthcare conglomerate. Brett mentions that two corporate-looking women visited the maternity ward the week before the kidnapping, claiming to represent HavenCare. Holmes orders vodka while on buprenorphine, his withdrawal medication, and collapses; Brett delivers him home. At a subsequent ultrasound, Poe learns Grey is carrying twins.

At a crime-writers' convention, an eccentric man named Oliver Paul approaches Holmes with a case he calls "The Mother Murders": 23 women killed over 23 years, all on September 30th, all mothers, all deaths ruled accidental. Paul says the first victim was his own mother. A text about a missing school bus in Putnam County pulls Poe and Marple away; Holmes refuses to join them. Grey tells Poe she has quit the force and is leaving New York to have the babies alone, believing he is not ready for fatherhood.

Holmes secretly investigates the Mother Murders, confirming the pattern of annual deaths. He visits Paul's Harlem townhouse, meeting Paul's British wife, Irene, and their two toddler daughters. Paul reveals that Holmes's mother, Nina, whom his father told him died 25 years earlier, is alive. Holmes travels to Delaware and finds Nina living under an assumed name. She confirms she has been sober for 20 years and that his father arranged her disappearance. Desperate for clarity, Holmes drops his remaining buprenorphine pills down a storm drain.

Marple flies to London, where constable Ben Dodgett escorts her to a Scotland Yard annex running the kidnapping case. With Rebecca Tran, a criminal intelligence analyst, she hacks into surveillance files and identifies a radical white-supremacist group called REGAL (Restore English Glory and Language). The group's masked leader is identified through voice analysis as Agnes Matts, a Yorkshire woman with family money from right-wing tabloids and a medical device company. At Silvercup Studios in Queens, Megan Robinson, the sister of a doula in British custody, poses as a baby wrangler at a diaper commercial shoot and attempts to steal three infants. She barricades herself in a soundstage with the sedated babies, but Marple conducts the hostage negotiation via FaceTime from London and convinces Megan to surrender. All three babies are rescued. Shortly after, Tran is found dead in her London apartment, likely poisoned.

At a meeting with the parents, Marple reveals the kidnapping's racial motive: The babies were selected because they are white, and the two newborns left behind were infants of color. Under interrogation, Megan reveals the children are being held at an abandoned farm on Staten Island for a live-streamed auction, sold to wealthy white bidders. A police raid on the New York City Farm Colony uncovers an underground video studio. Poe opens a camera case and discovers the body of a newborn, Edwin Cade, son of Sterling and Christine Cade. A box truck fleeing the compound crashes on the Goethals Bridge, killing the driver, Bill Barnes, the missing school bus driver.

Marple traces a NovaGen-branded cable connector, linked to the manufacturer of the counterfeit ankle bands, to a warehouse in Elizabeth, New Jersey. A police raid erupts into a gunfight. Inside a shipping container, they find all five Putnam County children, sedated but alive, each cradling one of the surviving St. Michael's infants. All ten children are rescued.

Paul, broadcasting from inside the warehouse, taunts Holmes with a warning that no mother is safe, "not even yours." Holmes fears Paul intends to target Nina and flies to Delaware by commandeered helicopter with the team, but a planted decoy and a taunting note reveal Nina was never the target. At Paul's Harlem townhouse, they find Paul holding a gun to Grey's head. He tracked Grey to the town where she had been hiding and intends to kill her as a variation on his annual murder of mothers. Paul's wife steps behind Marple with a gun. Marple recognizes the voice: Irene is actually Agnes Matts, the REGAL leader and mastermind behind all the kidnappings. Matts confesses to ordering Tran's murder, reveals that Paul fabricated the counterfeit security bands, and discloses that the couple's own toddler daughters have been sold. Marple disarms Matts as police move in, but Paul escapes through a service hatch. Grey is taken to St. Michael's, where a sonogram confirms both twins are healthy.

After the funeral for baby Edwin Cade, Dodgett calls from London with news that all four missing London babies have been found alive. That night, Holmes scratches his name off the firm's door with a razor blade. Marple finds him outside and kisses him. They confess their love and spend the night together. Hours later, a bomb destroys the first floor of their Brooklyn building. All four occupants survive. Holmes's phone lights up with texts from Paul, who vows to kill Holmes and styles himself as Holmes's "very own Professor Moriarty," the legendary nemesis of Sherlock Holmes.