This story starts before the infamous encounter at the Reichenbach Falls, when a an Italian scholar visits 221 Baker Street and tells the detective a tale about an ancient parchment, written by Marco Polo, taken from a rubbing from an even older artifact found in the libraries of Kublai Khan. This parchment is half of a document that Polo, and another traveler, the famed Moroccan Ibn Batuta, both took dramatic steps to hide. Now a secret organization, The Brotherhood of the Letter, who may have ties with Moriarty, are searching for the document as well. The chase is on.
The set-up for this story works well, but the execution falls a bit flat. The details and the background of the story are top-notch, and delivered smoothly, and Mr. Murthy manages a few subtle digs at the racial and cultural tropes of the era, but the plot drags a bit and lacks in urgency. Mr. Murthy clearly knows his history, and his Canon, but the novel seems more like an old-fashioned adventure of the type that H. Rider Haggard did so well, with Holmes, Watson and Moriarty plugged in. There are a large and various amount of viewpoints used in the book, and they add a bit to the multi-cultural flavor of the book, but they are somewhat muddled, and I had to backtrack more than once to make sure who was narrating.
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July 2020
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