In The Final Problem, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty in 1893. Holmes was resurrected by Doyle in 1903 in The Adventure of the Empty House, where the detective explains to Watson that he had faked his own death.
The period between the characters’ presumed death and reappearance is called The Great Hiatus, and is the subject of Norbu’s Holmes pastiche.
Norbu takes Holmes to India and Tibet, where he meets the Dalai Lama and Huree Chunder Mookerjee, a character from Kipling’s Kim. The latter, who has been appointed to keep an eye on Holmes by the colonial British government, is the narrator of the story.
After several adventures in India, including an encounter with The Thugs, Holmes and Mookerjee arrive in Tibet where Holmes must undertake one of his most difficult – and dangerous – cases yet.
“A wonderful and convincing pastiche...The story comes out in beautifully imagined late Victorian cadences...an engrossing combination of East and West, old and young, conventional storytelling and loving parody,” says a Washington Post review of the book.
Published in 1999.
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