Why Sherlock Holmes was not a Buddhist lama, other colorful things

Well, I must be a masochist, because I once again ventured to read yet another pastiche novel, this time Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years by Jamyang Norbu. This time I'm just disappointed rather than horrified, since the first half of the book was really good, almost worthy of the canon, and then it went off on this weird tangent that didn't fit at all into the realms of anything Holmesian. Just whan I thought I'd finally found one that was good, or at least plausible, my hopes are cruelly dashed by levitating swords.

( In which I digress about why Sherlock Holmes couldn't have been a Buddhist lama )

One happy benefit of reading the book, however, was being enlightened on some of the details of Thuggee, which was extremely useful to me in my game of persona letters, because I was trying to decide how exactly my heroine's father ought to be murdered, and after reading that I decided confidently that he ought to be strangled by Thugs. I'd considered it before, but decided to have him shot instead because I didn't know enough about Thuggee, but now I've decided to go for it, because it provides local color. There will always be other chances for character to be shot, but seeing as I don't forsee writing anything else partially set in India, I won't have another chance to have a character die in such a colorful way as being strangled by thugs. ;-D