Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumantra — Alan Vanneman

With a case as confounding as any in the original Holmes canon and a tale so terrifying it lay hidden for more than a century in Dr. Watson's dispatch box, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra begins familiarly enough. Elizabeth Trent, a bereft widow determined to clear her husband's name of both suicide and embezzlement, visits literature's most celebrated detective at his Baker Street flat. Within hours, though, Mrs. Trent herself is dead, and her curious suicide note draws Holmes and Watson into a hunt for a brutal murderer that takes them from England to Egypt, to India, and finally to the city Mrs. Trent has fled-rich, mysterious Singapore. Throughout the course of their sea journey Holmes and Watson contend with a series of formidable foes, and continually the two travelers uncover connections between their enemies and the cunning, ruthless colonial master of Singapore, Lord Barington. They also find an ally in the captain of the Prophet, who tutors them in the mysteries of Bada-a nation of subhumans ruled by the gigantic rat Harat. And in the exquisite Widow Han, keeper of the secrets of Singapore, they find an ally and more, as her exotic charms threaten to undo even the inscrutable sleuth's defenses against the fair sex. "A rollicking adventure story ... that] puts a superb spin on the intellectual byplay between Holmes and Watson.... Splendidly written homage."-Chicago Sun-Times