When a Music Hall hypnotist escapes from the London County Asylum, she leaves behind a single word scrawled in blood on the wall of her cell: Magister.

Soon, terror spreads through Victorian London as a series of killings begins. Superintendent William Melville of the Special Branch turns to an unlikely pair for help — brilliant stage magician Michael Magister and his glamorous assistant, Phoebe Le Breton. But there is a disturbing complication: Michael himself is one of the names on the murderer's death list.

Drawing on the recently discovered journals of Professor Artemus More, Steam, Smoke & Mirrors plunges into a world of hidden secrets, elaborate illusions and dangerous conspiracies. Magic and machinery, mystery and murder intertwine in an extraordinary steampunk vision of Victorian Britain, where nothing is quite as it appears.

But when every illusion conceals another secret, the question remains: is anything truly what it seems?