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The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
About the Author Jamyang Norbu is one of Tibet's foremost writers at work today. He is a director of the Amnye Machen Institute, Tibetan Center for Advanced Studies, Dharamsala. He is the author of several books, five plays, numerous pamphlets, and a traditional opera libretto. He is also the winner of the Crossword Award for English Fiction, 2000, India's equivalent of the Booker Prize for The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes . Book Description A new Sherlock Holmes mystery worthy of the master Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. In 1891, the British public was horrified to learn that Sherlock Holmes had perished in a deadly struggle with the archcriminal Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Then, to its amazement, he reappeared two years later, informing a stunned Watson, 'I traveled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa.' Nothing has been known of those missing years until Jamyang Norbu's discovery, in a rusting tin dispatch box in Darjeeling, of a flat packet carefully wrapped in waxed paper and neatly tied with stout twine. When opened the packet revealed Huree Chunder Mookerjee's (Kipling's Bengali spy and scholar) own account of his travels with Sherlock Holmes. Now for the first time, we learn of Holmes's brush with the Great Game and the world of Kim. We follow him north across the hot and duty plains of India to Simla, summer capital of the British Raj, and over the high passes to the vast emptiness of the Tibetan plateau. In the medieval splendor that is Lhasa, intrigue and black treachery stalk the shadows, and Sherlock Holmes confronts his greatest challenge. Reader Reviews 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: Begins with a bang, ends with a whimper, March 16, 2003 Reviewer: ensiform from Dallas, TX USA A pastiche of Holmes, set in India and Tibet. Taking as his starting-point the return of Holmes after his supposed death in the canon, wherein the detective reveals that he was travelling in Tibet under the name Sigurson, Norbu recreates those lost years in the Holmes chronicles. His narrator this time is none other than Hurree Mookerjee, from Rudyard Kipling's Kim (which, lamentably, I've not read). For the first half of the book, Norbu succeeds in weaving the two worlds, that of Victorian super-sleuth and the Raj, brilliantly. The puzzle of the brass elephant, the way Holmes pulls a fast one on some Thugs who are sent to attack the stalwart pair, and Holmes' skills at disguise are all classic Doyle with an Indian flavor. So far, so good - and the comic relief from the pudgy but proud Hurree adds even more color, as does the fine old Raj language ("a pukka villain," indeed). But suddenly, the book turns, and I can even pinpoint the exact location things begin to sour. It's at the beginning of chapter 17, under the apt rubric "...And Beyond." As in, beyond the rational world of Holmes, and into a world where Holmes springs into actiuon spurred on not by deduction but by "an odd feeling" which, of course, turns out to be a mystical premonition. A world of the mystic, of magic (hellfire, healing, magic crystals and energy shields!). I felt as if by that point, Norbu was using a character named Holmes, but who wasn't anything like the Holmes of the canon, to propel his story into a bizarre fantasy blend of Tibetan myth and New Age occult theories. Indeed, Holmes' personality changes altogether, and it's hard to believe that this super-powerful mystic could be the same character who goes back to England and solves murder cases. Too bad, because judging from the first two thirds or so, Norbu's got a real flair for language, pacing, suspense and mystery. A shame.
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