Mongo Mystery / The Beasts of Valhalla / George C. Chesbro

With a genius IQ, a previous career as a circus acrobat and a black belt in karate, criminology professor Dr Robert Frederickson – better known as “Mongo the Magnificent” – has a decidedly unusual background for a private detective. He also happens to be a dwarf. When Mongo’s sister asks him to investigate the death of his nephew Tommy – the victim of an apparent suicide – the private detective soon learns that it’s all connected to the computer game Tommy and his friends have created: an elaborate adventure based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The clues send Mongo on a journey across the country, from a painful visit to his former hometown in Nebraska and back to New York, then on to the rugged coast of California’s Big Sur and finally to the frozen depths of the Arctic Ocean, where a mad genius will stop at nothing to achieve total Armageddon.