THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA

The Giant Rat of SumatraA Sherlock Holmes Fan FictionBy Christopher Milner"... the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."So said Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in the story The Adventure of The Sussex Vampire.Is the world finally ready in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century?Well ready or not, here it comes.In Mr. Milner's telling of the story which is part mystery, part thriller, part sci-fi fantasy and part romance, be prepared for a roller coaster ride on a 19th Century English circus carnival fair ground when roller coasters hadn't even been invented yet.From the ship Matilda Briggs where a cabin boy's recreation of a Vincent Van Gogh still life painting leads to disaster for one of the ship's steam engines to the town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, England where cats are disappearing under mysterious circumstances.At times humourous and extremely comical to other times sinisterly horrifying and downright diabolical, Milner's story runs a gamut of emotions.From the eccentric Captain Heelander of the Matilda Briggs (a man a century and twenty years before his time) to a sinister stage magician who never takes off the masks he wears (sometimes a golden mask of Greek tragedy and other times a golden mask of Greek comedy), a torrid romance between a traveling hairbrush salesman and a Royal Navy officer's wife is thrown in for good measure against a background of exotic animals from the island of Sumatra and a living organism that appears as a giant dark cloud that terrorizes the cobblestone alleys of Stamford and is called the "Devil incarnate" by the town's Scottish maker of meat pies.In place of Dr. Watson as Holmes' companion for this adventure is the veterinarian Fred Clegg (who is the author Christopher Milner's actual great-grandfather) - an appropriate doctor for a tale involving animals from exotic Sumatra.And then there's Vittoria Donna Gina - the lovely singer, former lion tamer and now magician's stage assistant who seems to have caught the eye (and possibly the heart?) of Sherlock Holmes.For Irene Adler, she could just possibly be "the other woman".

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