Sherlock Holmes In India and Tibet

My wife surprised me the other day by bringing me a book that she found in the Ann Arbor District Library, a book I hadn't been looking for or asking for. This is the first time in 30 years of marriage that she has done that. She just happened to see it on a shelf, and thought that I might like it. She was right -- I did enjoy it.

The book was Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years by Tibetan author Jamyang Norbu. The subtitle is The Adventures Of the Great Detective In India And Tibet. Published in 1999, The Missing Years is a pastiche, an interesting attempt at combining the fictional worlds of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. The author, a contemporary Tibetan, begins the tale by describing how he came by a remarkable manuscript written by Hurree Mookerjee, who appeared in Kipling's Kim. In this document, Mookerjee describes a two-year period in which he traveled across India and Tibet with Sherlock Holmes. The period described covers the 'missing years' between Holmes' supposed death at Reichenbach and his re-appearance in London. Mookerjee plays a Watson-like role, both as a foil for Holmes' deductive brilliance, and as a stalwart companion who on more than one occasion saves the day himself.

Norbu has done a very nice job of weaving together numerous tidbits of story-lines from the two fictional worlds into a coherent whole. However, I must point out that I was fairly surprised by how the story changed gears from a skeptical, scientific adventure into a peculiar supernatural thriller. During the first half of the story, there are numerous typical Holmesian kinds of events, faithfully recorded by a perpetually astonished Mookerjee. Then, somewhere around the middle of the tale, various bits of supernatural and spiritual phenomena begin appearing, until by the end there are long passages that seem to be more like something from a fantasy story. I must confess that I never read any Kipling, who I know did write stories with strong supernatural elements, so perhaps these parts of The Missing Years owe more to that side of the union. By no means do I object to such stories, it's just that it caught me off-guard to find those elements in a Sherlock Holmes story. Still, if one accepts the supernatural parts, the resulting story is certainly exciting and coherent, and quite enjoyable.

I mentioned that Norbu is Tibetan. As is true of every Tibetan I have ever heard of, he has no love for the Chinese. He manages to weave into the story some of the long history of China's repeated aggressions against Tibet. I didn't find that these bits were at all heavy-handed. In fact, they set the background for much of the story's action in a thoroughly believable way.

I was also pleasantly surprised by Norbu's facility with English. He must have been well educated in English-style schools, because he has the various idioms one would expect from upper-class men from the Victorian era empire down pat. Mookerjee also turns out to be a scholar, so a lot of the 'manuscript' is written in a scholarly way. Norbu treats all of this with appropriate seriousness, even to the point of providing footnotes and cross-references. He even provides a glossary at the back of the book containing numerous Hindustani, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Afghan, etc. words.

I am always reluctant to recommend books, movies, etc., so I won't say that you'll definitely enjoy this book. However, I did enjoy it, and was glad it crossed my path. If you read it, let me know what you thought of it.