Basketball superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had a nice second career as an actor in such films as Airplane! and guest starring roles on TV throughout the ‘80s.
He has since made a career as an author.
Perhaps the most interesting of his works is Mycroft Holmes, co-written by Anna Waterhouse, in which Abdul-Jabbar tells the story of Sherlock Holmes’ brother before either of them became what we know them as in Arthur Conan Doyle’s more famous Holmes stories.
Mycroft himself, you may recall, is Sherlock’s older, smarter brother. Unlike Sherlock, he donates his services to Her Majesty’s government.
In the original stories, he’s extraordinarily lazy, extremely egotistical but very capable.
Fortunately, this story is at the very start of Mycroft’s career, so there is still action: he’s not yet sitting around in his social club thinking and plotting and not getting up out of his chair.
Young Mycroft’s best friend is a local tobacconist from Trinidad, Cyrus Douglas.
Douglas’ fiancée, daughter of a plantation owner in Trinidad, has run away back home after discovering that local children are disappearing and being murdered.
Mycroft is recruited to try and figure out exactly what is happening.
Of course, the situation is much worse than it seems and Mycroft is pulled in far deeper into bigger issues than they ever could expect.
Abdul-Jabbar is no Conan Doyle.
That said, there is an interesting grain of an idea in this story.
This book is worth a look, partly due to the author himself and partly for the curiosity of exploring extra characters in the Holmesian Universe.
That being said, it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the Holmes Canon: The writing style seems forced and the story itself feels small, despite the greater effort to make the events be world-changing and impactful.
For those looking for callbacks to the original stories, Sherlock does appear briefly, but he doesn’t figure into the story, existing more to remind readers that this is part of a bigger world with familiar characters.
In short, Mycroft Holmes is worth a read, but it’s nothing to write home about.
Steven McCreedy is a library technician at the Cambie branch.
