Mycroft and Sherlock - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

   2018; 411 pages.  New Author(s)? : No.  Book 2 (out of 3) in the Mycroft Holmes series.  Genres : Historical Mysteries; Victorian England; British Detectives.  Overall Rating:  8*/10.

 

    London in November 1872.  For Mycroft Holmes, it’s good to be back home after a thrilling adventure in the New World on the island of Trinidad.  Now he’s got a comfortable government job as “Special Consul to the Secretary of State for War".

 

    A pair of friends that Mycroft met in Trinidad have also accompanied him back to England and are loving it.  Cyrus Douglas now runs an apprentice school catering to street urchins.  And Huan is happily employed by Mycroft as both his carriage driver and bodyguard.

 

    Yes, life is good for Mycroft right now.  Indeed, his biggest source of stress is his somewhat wayward younger brother, Sherlock, who’s everything Mycroft is not: energetic, lanky in build, rash in temperament, and bored silly with having to study the musty old language of Latin.

 

    But there’s murder afoot in Victorian London: someone is gruesomely slicing up various lowlifes in the local Chinese community in Savage Gardens.  Sherlock finds the killings worthy of cogitation, but Mycroft doesn’t, since violent deaths in the slums of London are not that uncommon.

 

    But then one of Cyrus Douglas’s students ends up dead from a drug overdose, and the two Holmes brothers jump into action.  It’s a pity though, that they both pursue their investigation separately, and neither one wants to share their findings with the other.

 

    Such lack of communication could be deadly.

 

What’s To Like...

    Mycroft and Sherlock is the second Holmesian collaboration between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, but unlike the first book (reviewed here) where Mycroft was the featured protagonist, now he and Sherlock get equal billing.

 

    The storyline quickly becomes more complex.  Beyond investigating the "whodunit" of the abovementioned murders, Mycroft and Sherlock now have to:

    a.) deal with the Queen wanting Mycroft to “fix” an upcoming soccer match,

    b.) determine the tangled web of reasons behind the killing of the young student,

    c.) look into a suspicious shipwreck in Dorset, although Cyrus will do that, as the cargo that was lost in the accident was owned by him,

    d.) try to decipher fifteen mysterious “codes” scratched on subway walls in various subway stations.

    Woven throughout all of these plotlines is a trail of drug usage, which is not a spoiler since there’s an image of a hypodermic needle on the book cover, as well as at the start of every chapter.

 

    I loved the tie-ins to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle series.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse present plausible backstories for things like Sherlock’s opium habit, why he plays the violin, how he came to organize the “Baker Street Irregulars”, and why Mycroft leads such a sedentary lifestyle.  We even get our first glimpse of Sherlock’s future landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

 

    I liked the “feel” of Victorian-era London, especially since I presume both authors are American.  The colloquialisms of that time were also fun, such as a “jimmy-grant” (immigrant), “bruvver-in-loss”, “fresh squab and mash”, “peeler” (cop), and my favorite, a “knocker-upper”, which turns out to be a window-cleaner.

 

    Along the way, we learn a little chemistry (how to make a more potent opiate), a little Latin (as does Sherlock), and a little Mandarin Chinese (“shòu-shòu”).  We visit an opium den, and read the Agony Columns in the newspaper, and, best of all, are treated to numerous instances of startling observations and deductions by both Holmes brothers.  Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud.

 

    The ending is suitably complex and exciting.  It’s not particularly twisty, but hey, if the sleuthing is done right, there shouldn't be any unplanned turns of events.  The final chapter is a revealing Epilogue, containing a bunch of explanations about the whys and wherefores of Mycroft and Sherlock solving the case.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Autodidact (n.) : a self-taught person.

Others: Chockablock (adj.).

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “I wants to be a knocker-upper, Mr. Capps, cuz I already knows how to count to twelve.”  (pg. 60)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 338 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.02*/5, based on 2,404 ratings and 349 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “They find it [the corpse] just this morning,” Huan added,

    “Ah.  And who is the ‘they’ who found it?” Mycroft asked.

    “A publican,” Huan replied.  “Closing shop, two in the night it was, good working man, walking home, and he go falling over a body in the dark!”

    “Dear, I hope he was not injured,” Mycroft replied.

    “Oh no, he was dead.  Cut up in four pieces!”

    “No, I mean the publican.”  (pg. 14)

 

    “I am coming with you, of course!”

    “Thank you, no,” Douglas replied.

    “Mr. Douglas.  You are fatigued and lack proper nourishment.  You have also abused your tendons and muscles most unmercifully.  And I can glean from how you sit that your lower back and right hip are in some distress.  Not to mention that your left cornea has been scratched by sand –“

    “Does this soliloquy have a point?” Douglas interrupted, inadvertently rubbing his injured left eye while hating himself for proving the smug little sot correct.  (pg. 93)

 

“What harm could one more night of Latin possibly do?”  (pg. 302)

    There’s not much to nitpick about in Mycroft and Sherlock.  Some of the plotline tangents seemed a bit awkward, such as the soccer match meddling by Mycroft.  It was hard to see how that contributed to the tale, other than showing how the Holmes brothers’ brilliant deductive reasoning can be utilized in areas other than crime-solving.

 

   Ditto for the Royal Adelaide shipwreck.  Yes, it provided an important clue, but its timing seemed incredibly opportunistic, enabling Sherlock to become actively involved in Cyrus’s apprentice school.

 

    For me, the London setting wasn’t nearly as exotic as Book One’s Trinidad locale.  Also, I still find Mycroft more fascinating than Sherlock, but I recognize the need to bring the more famous brother into the series, and it must be admitted that the authors did a wonderful job of doing so.

 

    That’s about it.  Overall, Mycroft and Sherlock kept my interest from start to finish, and I still think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse do the best job of replicating the spirit and tone of the Arthur Conan Doyle series.  Lord knows, there are lots of poor imitations out there.

 

    8 Stars.  Book One, Mycroft Holmes, came out in 2016.  This book followed in 2018, and the third one, Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage was published in 2019.  Alas, since then. there have been no more installments, which leads me to wonder if Kareem and Anna have moved on to other projects.  I, for one, would be bummed if that's the casen my opinion, that would be a real bummer.