The Tibetan Treasure

Louise H. Girard was Head of Book Selection, University of St. Michael's College Library, Toronto.

This novel should have worked, but it doesn’t. As the work progresses we follow Zeke Marcus, a journalist, as he moves from Montreal to Istanbul to Kabul to Ladakh trying to unravel the meaning of a coded message by tracing it back to its source. This he has undertaken to do not for himself but for what turns out to be a form of Jewish underground. All the ingredients of a good adventure story are here: political intrigue, coded messages, foreign settings, romantic involvements, murders, hijacking, etc. At times the incidents are extremely exciting; unfortunately, the reactions of the hero, which are very important in this case since the novel is written in the first person, too often reduce the exciting to the mundane. This is because the hero never seems to become emotionally involved in the incidents. Possibly Alan Herscovici has been a journalist for so long that he finds it difficult to get away from a journalistic approach (this is his first novel, after all). In any case, what is essentially wrong with this work is that Zeke Marcus’s reactions are too much those of a journalist and not enough those of a person. I have no doubt that the average reader will have trouble identifying with him.

Also, Zeke Marcus leads too charmed a life. In the midst of all this action and violence (including the mutilation of bodies), all that he endures is a very quick enforced run up a steep mountain stairway.