This book is a fast-moving adventure tale based on the fascination that the Orient has long held for certain Westerners. Much as in science fiction, the Indian subcontinent serves as another world, where the everyday customs and assumptions of the Anglo-Saxon world don’t necessarily apply.
The Nine Unknown of the title is a mysterious group hidden from public sight. Each is entrusted with preserving an aspect of powerful ancient wisdom. They are known to each other, but each recruits a set of nine followers who know only their leader, not the other members of the Nine. On the same principle, each of these followers replicates a group of nine, forming a pyramid throughout the Indian subcontinent to protect the mysteries.
In keeping with that premise, this tale isn’t told from the perspective of the Nine, but that of a disparate group of adventurers on their trail. This group has been sent to Father Cyprian, an eighty-year-old Catholic priest for whom all such mysteries smack of the occult and thus should be destroyed. Accordingly, he has devoted his life to collecting the secret books containing the arcane knowledge of the Nine. Whoever possessed the complete set would have all power, but Cyprian—like a latter-day Savonarola—intends to incinerate them.
Mundy supplies few details of the ancient wisdom, apart from anticipating splitting the atom (not bad for a book published in 1923).
The freebooters were recruited by an investor in New York. He is named in chapter one but plays no further role in the book, leaving me to wonder why the author bothered to give him a name, even if it is the delightful moniker Meldrum Strange. The men he recruits have little interest in books. Instead, they have signed on for the gold that the Nine are alleged to have hoarded. Four are Westerners, Three are local, and in keeping with the author’s Orientalist fascination, they are more colorfully depicted than the Westerners. One is a Pathan, a fierce warrior from the Afghan hills (accompanied by seven sons from seven different women). Another is a fastidious and murderous Sikh. The third is an overweight, comically loquacious Hindu. He is named in chapter one as the source from whom the anonymous narrator heard the tale. The significance of that detail and the remark that his accuracy is frequently questionable set up a great payoff in the final chapter (nope, not gonna say more).
The search for the Nine Unknown is complicated by the existence of a parallel group structured in the same way. They, too, seek the knowledge of the Nine, but to use it for their own dark purposes in the service of the destructive goddess Kali.
The way the adventurers come into contact with the Nine is a delightful plot twist. In my limited understanding, a principle of Asian martial arts is to use the energy of your adversary to accomplish your own aims. Here, too, I will say no more.
Mundy includes some philosophy and local color, but these elements are subordinated to the action. I wish I’d read more books like this when I was young. But it’s not bad that I can discover them now that I’m old and have more time to read for pleasure. ( )

Talbot Mundy (real name: William Lancaster Gribbon) was born in England but moved to the US and became a naturalized citizen. He was a fantasy/adventure writer of the H. Rider Haggard / Sax Rohmer / Robert E. Howard school. He wrote two novel series – “Jimgrim” and “Tros of Samothrace” and a number of stand-alone novels and stories. The “Jimgrim” books feature the American adventurer James Schuyler Grim and a coterie of friends and allies: Captain Athelstan King of the Khyber Rifles, Cotswold Ommany, Jeff Ramsden, the babu Chullunder Ghose, the Sikh Narayan Singh, and miscellaneous other Europeans or natives as the plot demanded. Most of the JimGrim stories are set in India under the Raj and are of the “white savior” variety, with Jimgrim leading his band into various adventures, often involving some sort of mystical enemy – Hindu hypnotists, Thug assassins, Tibetan devil worshipers, etc. The Tros novels are set in late Roman republic – Julius Caesar is a personal enemy of Tros – and the action shifts from Britain to Gaul to Egypt to Italy. There’s nothing overtly supernatural in them, although Tros has reportedly taken part in various Greek “mysteries” and the Britons he meets have the talents – second sight, for example – attributed to Celts.

I’ve read six Tros novels (Tros, Helma, Avenging Liafil, Helene, Queen Cleopatra, Caesar Dies; these were collected short stories so the number and title of the novels depends on the publisher) and three Jimgrim (Om, the Secret of Ahbor Valley, The Nine Unknown and The Devils Guard). The Tros novels, originally published in the 1920s and 30s, enjoyed some resurgence when heroic fantasy became popular with J.R.R. Tolkien. The Jimgrim novels are a little harder to find; I pick them up as they appear in used bookstores (I know I could order them all from Amazon, but what’s the fun in that?)

Mundy seems to have been pretty unpleasant in his early life; he was a self-confessed womanizer, a bankrupt, and an ivory hunter. He also consistently exaggerated his own adventures, claiming to have fought in the Second Boer War and to have met ivory hunter Frederick Selous – although it can be proved that he didn’t. Later in life he became religious – first Christian Science, then Theosophy.

Mundy has a somewhat more favorable view toward natives than other writers of the time; for example his babu, Chullunder Ghose, shows a lot of the stereotypes – he’s bombastic, pudgy, and proud of his English, and a self-confessed coward. But he’s also intelligent, loyal, resourceful, and just as brave as the rest of the Jimgrim crew when bravery is necessary. The novels are entertaining enough and I’m looking forward to gradually tracking down the rest of them. ( )

With The Nine Unknown, Talbot Mundy seems to be picking up on ideas present in the last of his Yasmini series, Caves of Terror. This novel, however, has an elaborate plot with a mystery cult whose origins stretch far back beyond any recorded human history. Needless to say, with references to Atlantis and speculation on magic sources of energy and superhuman intellects, this is also Mundy's most serious foray into fantasy, rather than just adventure, in the Jimgrim series.

The special treat in this novel is that it brings together just about every one of Mundy's Jimgrim heroes, Jim Grim, Ramsden, Singh, Ross, Athelston King, Ali and sons, and the babu. Only Ommony is missing. And where was he? For this Jimgrim novel has also moved its setting to India, away from the Middle East. And India is also the setting of Ommony's stories. I'm willing to bet that Cotswold Ommony has just the place for those hidden books of secret knowledge belonging to the Unknown Nine.

As with all Mundy's books set in India, his sense of atmosphere is superb. You are there. More than Palestine and Egypt, Mundy is at home in India. He's more familiar with its details, its very essence, than any other place he writes about.

Mundy is a fine literary stylist when he wants to be. And, here, he wants to be. His work can be elevated in tone as well as content, too, as it is in The Nine.

Finally, although unnecessary, it is so much more rewarding to read these stories and novels in their published sequence. You can see Mundy grow along with the new ideas he is importing into his fiction. ( )