Book review: Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years

When Conan Doyle resurrected Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Empty House", Holmes explains that he's spent his time doing chemistry experiments in the south of France and exploring Tibet while posing as a Swedish explorer. Jamyang Norbu, a Tibetan writer, is well-suited to write a novel filling in this gap. Holmes arrives in India, and immediately has to dodge an assassination attempt and gains a new associate, Hurree Chunder Mookerjee (a character from Kipling's novel Kim). Pursued by Col. Sebastian Moran's agents, Holmes and Mookerjee head into Tibet and to Lhassa, where they receive a request from the Grand Lama himself.

Norbu captures Conan Doyle's Victorian prose style superbly. The only flaw is that Mookerjee sometimes echoes some bit of Watson's writing far too closely; I would have preferred him to be more distinct, providing a new viewpoint on Holmes's character. On the other hand, Mookerjee fills the same role as Watson -- a reliable and knowledgeable companion -- without being a poor copy. He's an enjoyably complex character, a rational scientist who's still intrigued by mysticism and the supernatural, and is treated respectfully by the author. "Respectful" is a strong underlying element that I appreciated; sometimes pastiche authors get sloppy and re-tread a Conan Doyle plot (John Dickson Carr did this a lot, rewriting "The Speckled Band" but using a tarantula instead of a snake), or shoe-horn historical characters into the plot. Here the author is respectful of Holmes, of Mookerjee, of Tibet, and of Buddhism. (The Chinese come out worst, with a nefarious commission in Lhassa, troops of brutish soldiers, and a renegade sorceror; not surprising, considering the Chinese treatment of Tibet in the 20th century.) I even enjoyed the supernatural elements, which can also be a crutch for poor plotting, but they fit into the story well, explain some puzzling points of Sherlockian canon, and provide a nice final twist.

(Originally titled The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes.)