Synopsis
Sherlock Holmes is dead—or so most of the world thinks. His fatal plunge over the Reichenbach Falls as he struggled with his archenemy, Moriarty, has been widely reported.
But Holmes has escaped and is alive.
In his immediate circle, only Holmes’s brother, the lethargic genius Mycroft, knows of his survival. Even Dr. Watson thinks that the great detective is dead. Among his enemies, Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s chief henchman, knows of Holmes’s probable escape and waits for their inevitable meeting.
From 1891 to 1894, Holmes wanders through Asia. He is alone, without Watson, without Scotland Yard, armed only with his physical strength and endur-ance and his revered cold logic and rationality.
The adventures recounted in The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes range from Lhasa to Katmandu, from the East Indies to the deserts of Rajasthan. In Tibet and throughout the Orient, Holmes is caught up in the diplomatic machinations of British imperialism that Rudyard Kipling dubbed “the Great Game.” He confronts the tsarist agent Dorjiloff, the great art thief Anton Furer, and the mysterious Captain Fantôme. And here, written in Holmes’s own words, is the account of “The Giant Rat of Sumatra,” for which until now he so famously thought the world unprepared.
For Holmes’s fans throughout the world, the stories in The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes fill in an enigmatic gap, the cause of so much speculation in the great detective’s career.
About the Author
Ted Riccardi is professor emeritus in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, New York. He began teaching at Columbia in 1968 and served as chairman of his department and as director of Columbia’s Southern Asian Institute in the School of International and Public Affairs. Among his special interests are the history and cultures of India and Nepal, where he has lived and traveled widely and about which he has written extensively. He has received a number of research awards, including grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Ford Foundation and Fulbright fellowships. From 1980 to 1982 he served as counselor for cultural affairs at the United States embassy in New Delhi. In 1999, he took early retirement from Columbia to raise a new family and to write. Riccardi lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Coon, and their family. They spend as much time as they can in New Mexico. The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes is Ted Riccardi’s first work of fiction, a tribute to his favorite mystery writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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