Sherlock Holmes' Lost Adventure

Mystery and death swirl around two beautiful young women who come into the lives of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson of No. 221 B, Baker Street. One mysteriously disappears, the other becomes embroiled in a baffling case of stolen documents, shadowy figures and an esoteric society, the Nine Unknown Men, bent on securing the secrets of Life and Death from naturalist and friend to Sherlock Holmes, Charles Darwin. A crusty sailor dies at the very doorstep of the great detective, a scroll of indecipherable scribbles pinned in his frozen hand. Its arcane message points Holmes and Watson first to the volcano-rimmed shores of Sumatra, then to underground sewers beneath London, lair of Holmes' new nemesis, Lofcadio Hearseborne III—arch villain, arch racist, bent on the destruction of "undesirables"—and site of Victorian London's greatest terror.

Everyone knows the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Some people even think these characters were real-life human beings. There are even self-proclaimed experts on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's favorite characters deemed Sherlockians and Holmesians. In any case, fans of the deductive master-mind will be pleased to meet up with him again as author Lauren Steinhauer captures the true romance and spirit of the famous duo in the exciting mystery "Sherlock Holmes' Lost Adventure: The True Story of the Giant Rats of Sumatra." The novel won Honorable Mention for fiction on October 2 in this year's DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Book Awards, which celebrates the success of independent authors and publishers and is part of the annual DIY Book Festival held in Los Angeles and New York. Having read and re-read the original "canon" of 56 short stories and 4 novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Steinhauer has had a life-long interest in Sherlock Holmes. Inspired by an adventure slyly alluded to by Doyle in The Sussex Vampire, Steinhauer decided to finish what Doyle had started and complete the canon with the world's most famous non-story. "[Steinhauer has] produced a breathlessly exciting short novel that involves Holmes and Watson with an evil genius whose accomplishments dwarf those of ex-Professor Moriarty," explains Roger Johnson with The District Messenger: The Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. …And of course there are those giant rats — yes, rats in the plural. It's a heady mixture, and it would make a grand movie, should the makers of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" be looking for another property. This is not really Conan Doyle's Holmes, but it is jolly good fun." In "Sherlock Holmes' Lost Adventure, a youthful Sherlock Holmes recuperates from an ordeal, destined to be chronicled by Dr. Watson as "A Study in Scarlet." Holmes' next adventure, the lost adventure, starts mundanely enough with the theft of a typewriter but for one outré fact: the death of the beautiful supplicant's manservant. More thefts and purloined documents carry Holmes and Watson across Europe on the Orient Express in search of the truth. Holmes and Watson will face arch villain Lofcadio Hearseborne III and London's greatest terror yet. Skillfully written with appropriate dialogue and imagery, Sherlock Holmes' Lost Adventure captures the beloved quirky characters of Baker Street and the romance of the Victorian era complete with gaslight and fog. Readers will find that getting rid of giant Sumatran rats truly is elementary—as long as you have the deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes on your side.

Lauren Steinhauer is a born a storyteller, entertaining boyhood friends with interactive adventures. As a young man in Hollywood, he performed magic—a form of storytelling—at the famous Magic Castle. A decade ago, Lauren began "Sherlock Holmes' Lost Adventure: The True Story of the Giant Rats of Sumatra," the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle leaning over his shoulder. He is currently drafting a new novel, "Inside Satan's Lair: The Unlikely Relationship between Dr. Felix Kersten and Dreaded Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler of the SS".