Everybody, they say, has a book in them. Retired Chief Inspector Walter Dew certainly did. And it took him back to the good old days, when coppers lived in station houses, that nice Mr Campbell-Bannerman was at Number Ten, and Britain had the biggest empire in the world. But, under the streets of London, something stirred. More than that, there was a muttering that grew to a grumbling and the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling. Then out of the houses, the bodies came tumbling! 

Superintendent Sholto Lestrade, with Dew by his side and the rookies Bang and Olufsen in his wake, must go Below to face their demons, to find a murderer whose machinations will upset the infrastructure of the richest city on earth. Will any of them live to tell Dew’s tale? The tale of a rat. 

M J Trow has written this seventeenth in the Lestrade series after a gap of seventeen years, in which the sallow-faced superintendent has never been far from his thoughts. With characters such as Sergeant Bill ‘Wall’ Pepper and Inspector ‘Blabber’ Pearson of the Press Liaison Department sprinkled throughout, this genuine puzzle is also features as ever the wry humour and laugh out loud moments which fans of the accident-prone policeman have come to love.