Mycroft and Sherlock

July 30, 2018
Abdul-Jabbar and Waterhouse’s intriguing sequel to 2015’s bestselling Mycroft Holmes again places Sherlock Holmes’s older brother in the lead. In 1872, 26-year-old Mycroft’s acumen has landed him a senior position in the War Office in London, and even brought him to the attention of Queen Victoria, who seeks his help in averting tensions with Scotland over a football match. Mycroft also serves in loco parentis for his 18-year-old younger sibling, whose interest in crime has manifested itself by an appetite for newspaper reports on the subject. The brothers join forces with Mycroft’s close friend from Trinidad, philanthropist Cyrus Douglas, to investigate a number of mysteries, including a series of bizarre killings dubbed the Savage Gardens murders after the name of the small street where they occurred. The murderer has claimed seven victims, six of them Chinese, who were all sliced into quarters and left to bleed out. Although the authors’ active Mycroft is a far cry from the canon’s sedentary genius, their depiction of what he was like as a young man works as a plausible backstory. Agent: Deborah Morales, Iconomy.

Starred review from July 15, 2019
Abdul-Jabbar and Waterhouse’s third pastiche (after 2018’s Mycroft and Sherlock), their best yet, provides intriguing challenges for both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes while continuing to present plausible backstories for the brothers. In 1873, Mycroft and his longtime friend and partner, Cyrus Douglas, agree to help Chinese businessman Deshi Hai Lin locate Bingwen Shi, the fiancé of Lin’s daughter, Ai, who happens to be an old flame of Mycroft’s. Shi, a land investor, disappeared in London en route to a meeting with a client. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Sherlock, who’s not yet an encyclopedia of knowledge relevant to detecting crime, gets himself tossed out of college so he can tackle a sensational serial murder case. Someone has killed eight people across Great Britain, leaving near each corpse a note bearing the message “The Fire 411!” That the victims appear to have nothing in common adds to the puzzle. The authors do a stellar job of illuminating the siblings’ developing relationship while concocting a clever and twisty plot. Sherlockians will be enthralled. Agent: Deborah Morales, Iconomy.

July 15, 2019
A third round of Victorian detection and domestic friction for the imperishable Holmes brothers. If there had been a 24-hour news cycle in 1873, every hour would have been devoted to the Fire 411 killer, whose murders would never have been identified as such if he hadn't insisted on leaving his calling card at each crime scene, a message reading "The Fire 411!" The eight victims to date, ranging from a boy of 7 and a girl of 10 up to a retired barrister in his 80s, have been so marginal that the case wouldn't have enticed Mycroft, addict and sometime foreign agent, if the ninth victim, Elise Wickham, weren't the stepdaughter of Queen Victoria's cousin Count Wolfgang Hohenlohe-Langenburg. In fact, the Count, a bully and a swindler, had already attracted the attention of Mycroft and his Trinidadian friend, Cyrus Douglas, who now must switch gears smoothly from seeking evidence of him to solving his stepdaughter's murder to accommodate the queen. Their novel solution is to farm the case out to Mycroft's younger brother, who's a student at Downing College, Cambridge. Sherlock's eagerness to follow the crooked trail of the Fire 911 killer leaves Mycroft free to oblige shipping magnate Deshi Hai Lin, whose life he saved in Mycroft and Sherlock (2018) and who now, as if he weren't already indebted enough, begs Mycroft's help in seeking and recovering Bingwen Shi, the fiance of his lovely daughter, Ai Lin. The decision to assign each of the feuding brothers to a separate case is great for the family peace, but it soft-pedals a leading attraction of the series and produces enough back-and-forth plotting to put most readers in serious danger of whiplash. Against all odds, the riddle behind the kidnapping turns out to be more interesting, more surprising, and more logical than that of the Fire 411 killer. All the usual pleasures--blood and thunder, sibling rivalry, historical walk-ons--but no great shakes as a mystery.

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August 16, 2019

It's 1873 and Mycroft Holmes, 27, brother of 19-year-old Sherlock, government minister and confidant of Queen Victoria, has had heart surgery and resigned his diplomatic position. Here, Mycroft and his Trinidadian friend Cyrus Douglas are asked by Chinese businessman Deshi Hai Lin to find his daughter Ai's missing fiancé. Mycroft is secretly in love with Ai. Meanwhile, Sherlock has dropped out of Cambridge to investigate eight seemingly random murders all over the country with no apparent cause of death. All the victims are marked with notes saying "The Fire 411." While Sherlock and his bodyguard visit the murder sites of now 11 victims, Mycroft and Cyrus are chasing a Russian arms dealer. When the Queen reveals that one of the murdered is a royal relative, Mycroft and Sherlock reluctantly begin to work together. VERDICT The third Mycroft tale (after Mycroft and Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes) from coauthors Abdul-Jabbar and Waterhouse is another winner. The Victorian setting is well drawn, the dialog rings true, the period details, both factual and fictive, support a labyrinthine plot including race and class distinctions. It all meshes into a fine tale set prior to the Sherlockian stories we know so well. Highly recommended, as are its two predecessors.--Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2019
"The Fire 411!" is the cryptic note left behind at a series of seemingly unconnected murders across 1873 England. The victims are solitary individuals with no close family. Nineteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is fascinated by the case and is working up a theory from newspaper accounts. But he wants to get on the trail of the killer in person. He's within a month of finishing his studies at Cambridge, and he'll need to secure the funds for the trip from his older brother, Mycroft, who has his own mystery to solve. The fianc� of the woman for whom he's carried a torch for years has disappeared. Though she's promised to another, he feels obligated to relieve her pain by finding her loved one. The brothers set out on their separate quests, eventually coming to the same sad conclusion: much of the evil in the world is grounded in greed. This third collaboration from NBA Hall-of-Famer Abdul-Jabbar, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and author of 15 books, and screenwriter Waterhouse is another thoroughly entertaining mystery, with great appeal for Holmesians, in particular, and fans of Victorian mysteries, in general.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)