It's 1926 and young Emma Schumacher is feeling stuck in a small English seaside town. Her Aunt Sybil's friend is visiting, and the two friends simply cannot stop fighting. It's enough to drive everyone in the house mad. Emma takes solace in a new friendship and spends as much time away from the house as she possibly can. The day she leaves to visit her father in Bonn, Germany, couldn't come any sooner. Then, she receives a strange letter from her father, an Egyptologist. He's planning a lecture tour during the time she had planned to visit him. What? That doesn't make sense! Not to mention, the letter was shorter than she was accustomed to, contained very little in the way of information, and went to the wrong house initially. Emma suspected something wasn't quite right. Even her Aunt Tinni, who lives with her father in Bonn, has no idea what is happening or where he is, only that he didn't take any of his things with him. With Aunt Sybil to chaperone, Emma sets off to find her father somewhere in Germany. Along the way, she meets three young gentlemen, who each offers to help her in her search, and each competes for her attention along the way. Emma comes of age as they investigate murder, kidnapping, theft and fraud in the antiquities trade. Which one will find her father first, and thus capture her heart?