Mycroft and Sherlock: 06/16/22

Mycroft and Sherlock by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse involves a series of murders of Chinese people in one of the poorest neighborhoods in London. When one of Cyrus Douglas's young charges ends up dying in a similar manner, Douglas and the brothers Holmes work together to identify the murderer and their motive.

Like so many of the Sherlock Holmes pastiches, this second volume draws on familiar details from the canon. This one, though, seems to have drawn not from the original source, so much as from a popular modern reinterpretation, namely Sherlock. In particular, "The Blind Banker" (series 1, episode 2).

But this homage to an homage is recontextualized against the Opium War. The opium clues are so blatant that it was hard for me to fathom how not one, not even two, but three described attentive geniuses could fail to piece together things. Granted, I have years of reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries (and other mysteries) as well as twenty-twenty hindsight on history but still, these three are supposed to be the cream of the sleuthing crop.

One interesting side plot, though, went on to explain why in the canon, Mycroft doesn't galavant with his younger brother. The authors give him a chronic health condition to deal with that will keep him from any future athletic escapades. Again, though, his situation is brought on by his own hubris.

The third book is The Empty Birdcage (2019)

Three stars

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