Sherlock Holmes Missing Years

January 12, 2015
Indian author Murthy offers an offbeat pastiche that purports to tell the real story of what happened after the legendary Holmes-Moriarty encounter at the Reichenbach Falls. In 1893, two years after Watson believed both men died, he receives a letter postmarked Yokohama, Japan. Inside is a note in Sherlock Holmes’s hand: “Watson, I need you. My violin, please. S.H.” Also enclosed is a first-class ticket for a merchant ship bound from Liverpool to Yokohama. Aboard the boat, Watson finds an oddball assortment of passengers, including his Japanese suitemate, Kazushi Hasimoto, who’s murdered during the voyage. Moriarty turns out to have survived Reichenbach, but those expecting a genuine battle of wits between the professor and the detective will be disappointed. The humor isn’t for all tastes (in a footnote Watson remarks that he didn’t read one of Holmes’s monographs, as he “felt it was one monograph too many”), and the plot drags for long stretches.

January 15, 2015
Still wondering what the great detective was doing between his reported death in 1891 and his reappearance in 1894? Actually, he was working closely with Shigeo Oshima, director of Intelligence Research for Emperor Meiji of Japan, on the shadowy Operation Kobe55.Or rather, working his way toward Japan, since two-thirds of this knockabout tale has passed before Holmes and Watson steam into Nagasaki Bay. After surviving his confrontation with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls in a startlingly casual reboot, Holmes sends Watson a cryptic note and a ticket on the North Star, departing Liverpool for Yokohama, and the game is afoot. A murder aboard ship soon focuses Watson's attention, and he makes confident, inaccurate accusations about which of his fellow passengers is guilty and, more amusingly, which of them is Holmes in disguise. Reunited at last, the former flat mates try one ingenious dodge after another to throw the omniscient Moriarty off their trail, pausing only long enough to converse with Rabindranath Tagore, dodge a boulder at Angkor Wat, and solve several lesser, and often more entertaining, mysteries en route to an impromptu audience with the emperor and a denouement in which Holmes unmasks a forgettable traitor lodged deep within Operation Kobe55. The most original contribution from Murthy is a series of footnotes in which Watson protests, among other things, his highhanded treatment by a young female editor at his American publisher's office. Bound to be overshadowed by Anthony Horowitz's Moriarty (2014), which offers a quite different account of the battle between Holmes and Moriarty. That's a shame, because Murthy (The Time Merchants and Other Strange Tales, 2013, etc.) provides sturdy adventure, colorful Japanese backgrounds, and a mastery of many voices, including Watson's.

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March 1, 2015
Efforts to keep Sherlock Holmes goingand maybe cash in on that mighty namehave taken some strange turns over the years. He's battled Dracula, thwarted Nazis, even gone to see Dr. Freud. Now Indian author Murthy is here with another Watsonian revision, telling us that the great detective didn't stage his return to life in The Adventure of the Empty House. Rather, Holmes and Watson were in touch soon after the Reichenbach Falls, heading off to Asia to thwart Professor Moriarty's attempt to dominate the world's opium trade. Murthy displays considerable narrative skill, setting up a locked-room mystery, mounting chases and confrontations, and doing it all so artfully that one wonders: Why drag Holmes in? In a prologue, Murthy says it's like riffs in jazz, new twists on an old tune. Maybe, but why do so many of these pastiches end up making a joke out of Holmes? Before the story's done, we see Holmes wearing a pigtail, turning vegetarian, and lecturing on it at the Royal Society. This is a first-rate adventure yarn, though many Sherlockians may be holding their noses.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)