Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra

Gilbert, the author of two collections of short Holmes pastiches (The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes and The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes), delivers an atmospheric and suspenseful novel-length rendering of one of the most famous of Dr. Watson's notoriously tantalizing untold tales. In 1898, Scotland Yard asks Holmes to help explain why an unmoored tea cutter, the Matilda Briggs, was found abandoned near a London dock, with only a dying cabin boy on board. The detective also agrees to assist a new client, Daniel Collier, in interpreting a series of letters his explorer and theologian father sent him from the Far East. As in Doyle's own longer stories, Gilbert relates much of the action in flashbacks, and if the revelation of what the rat is fails to fully satisfy, his ability to conjure up the familiar Baker Street scene will make future such efforts welcome. (Apr.)