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Mycroft and Sherlock

(Mycroft Holmes and Sherlock #2)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,

Anna Waterhouse (Goodreads Author)

4.02 · Rating details · 2,083 ratings · 316 reviews

The new novel by NBA All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, starring brothers Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes.

Now a force to be reckoned with in the War Office, the young Mycroft Holmes is growing his network of contacts and influence, although not always in a manner that pleases his closest friend, Cyrus Douglas. A Trinidadian of African descent, Douglas has opened a home for orph ...more

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Kindle Edition, 336 pages

Published October 9th 2018 by Titan Books

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· 2,083 ratings · 316 reviews

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Nov 24, 2018 Cindy Burnett rated it it was amazing

4.5 stars

When I first saw this series, I have to say I was a little unsure what a book about Sherlock Holmes written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would look like. I have long been a fan of his basketball playing but clearly have not followed him very closely because he has written many books and is well known in the Sherlock world for his love of Sherlock Holmes. With this series, Abdul-Jabbar demonstrates that he is incredibly talented in more than one field because his portrayal of Sherlock, Mycroft ...more

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Oct 21, 2018 Mahlon rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2018

I’ve been anticipating the publication of this book for about a year and it did not disappoint! Another rip-roaring, page turning, almost literally heart-stopping adventure of Mycroft Holmes and his friend Douglas. Although I found the story underwhelming, it’s the depth of the writing and the characters that will keep readers coming back to this series. I agree with other reviewers that there was a little too much Sherlock for a Mycroft adventure, but I think Sherlockians will enjoy being there ...more

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Oct 17, 2018 Deb Jones rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

As long as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and co-writer Anne Waterhouse continue to write books in the Holmes' series, I will be ready and waiting to read them. I thoroughly enjoyed "Mycroft Holmes," the pair's first book; their second offering is no less dynamic.

Although the timeline of the second book, "Mycroft and Sherlock" follows that of "Mycroft Holmes," these books could just as easily be read as stand-alones for the adventures in each of them. Reading them in sequence adds to the understanding of ...more

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Oct 16, 2019 Hart_D rated it really liked it

I read the first of these and had mixed feelings about it, but because I really liked the main characters, Mycroft and Cyrus, I decided to give the second one a try. I'm glad I did, because I enjoyed this book much more than the first. I would rate my enjoyment level at 5/5, but I do see some flaws in the plot's structure, so it's 4/5.

Sherlock joins Mycroft and Cyrus as a major character. He's only 18, and quite an angsty teenager, but I found him mostly endearing and very in-character for cano I read the first of these and had mixed feelings about it, but because I really liked the main characters, Mycroft and Cyrus, I decided to give the second one a try. I'm glad I did, because I enjoyed this book much more than the first. I would rate my enjoyment level at 5/5, but I do see some flaws in the plot's structure, so it's 4/5.

Sherlock joins Mycroft and Cyrus as a major character. He's only 18, and quite an angsty teenager, but I found him mostly endearing and very in-character for canon Sherlock. I liked this interpretation of him at a different age. He's vulnerable and makes mistakes, and he's not really any smarter than Mycroft; he's just amoral and reckless, which gives him more opportunities for heroism. But it feels like the narrative is aware of this fact, and this is really Mycroft's story.

Mycroft here is a guy trying to do his best in life, for his country and for his difficult younger brother, while struggling with some serious personal problems. In a sense, the book is the story of Mycroft giving up on finding happiness for himself, so it has a melancholy feel. There's one prominent female character and Mycroft develops a crush on her. She's a pretty interesting side character, and I was glad she didn't have a larger role, since I strongly disliked the romance plot in the first book.

My problem with the book (big spoiler): (view spoiler)

Minor problem (small spoiler): (view spoiler)

I love both Cyrus and Mycroft, as well as their friendship, and I also love the fact that Sherlock didn't take over this book. I'm not a big fan of fight scenes, but these were all very good and not too long or frequent. In fact, this book is written like popular crime thrillers, in that it has short chapters and lots of PoV changes, although it's a fairly long book. There is still a lot of flavor of 1870s London, which is what draws me to historical mysteries.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Damian Lynch, and he was fantastic.

...more

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Dec 21, 2018 Melissa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-on-goodreads, mystery-holmes-sherlock

Was not as impressed with this one as the first. If felt like too many characters who were not as fully developed as I would have liked. Definitely dragged for me.

"Now a force to be reckoned with in the War Office, the young Mycroft Holmes is growing his network of contacts and influence, although not always in a manner that pleases his closest friend, Cyrus Douglas. A Trinidadian of African descent, Douglas has opened a home for orphaned children, while still running his successful import busin ...more

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Oct 12, 2019 Rachel rated it it was amazing

This book is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche I've read in a long time. I'm kinda picky about my Sherlock Holmes portrayals (okay, VERY picky about them), but this one pleased me so much! It focuses more on Mycroft than Sherlock and is definitely the most relatable portrayal I've seen of the elder Holmes brother in basically forever.

I was a little worried about Sherlock himself at first because he's very young here, still a university student, and I thought at first he had too much, um... emot This book is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche I've read in a long time. I'm kinda picky about my Sherlock Holmes portrayals (okay, VERY picky about them), but this one pleased me so much! It focuses more on Mycroft than Sherlock and is definitely the most relatable portrayal I've seen of the elder Holmes brother in basically forever.

I was a little worried about Sherlock himself at first because he's very young here, still a university student, and I thought at first he had too much, um... emotional fervor, maybe? A little too reckless? Too moody? But as I read on, I could see how the authors were contrasting that with who he would eventually become with who he is as a young adult, how things he experiences at this point help mold and shape him into the mature Holmes we meet in Doyle's stories. By the middle of the book, I was fully accepting of this portrayal, especially as we spent more time in Sherlock's point of view.

One of the things I liked best about this book was how CLEAN it is! There are zero cusswords. There's no sex. There are quite a few mentions of violent crimes, some of them extreme, but we don't get detailed accounts of how that violence occurs, we see its aftermath or hear someone's remembrance of it. The violence we do see is street-fights and things of that sort. The plot centers around a series of corpses that have been cut into four parts and mutilated, but they don't go into great detail about them, just say which body parts were cut off, using phrases that Victorian gentlemen would use, if that makes sense? It never seemed icky or gratuitous to me.

But there's a lot of talk about drug use, about how opium and its derivatives are totally legal at that time, very common, and how they can destroy people's lives. The murders are linked to the opium trade, and there's a lot of discussion about the drugs and about characters in the story who have used them, including children. I learned some really interesting historical things from this, and it was intriguing from a Sherlockian perspective since we know that by the time of the canonical stories, he was using cocaine recreationally, though Dr. Watson did eventually help him overcome that habit. But here we already see the seeds planted for how he would be able to encounter and acquire the drug, as well as why it was kind of treated as not a huge deal within the canon. ...more

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May 04, 2019 Lisa K rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, drugs, sherlock-holmes

More page-turning adventures of Mycroft and Cyrus. This time with more Sherlock and Huan! Plus drugs.

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Oct 26, 2019 Rory rated it it was ok

I was disappointed--doubly so, because I love Abdul-Jabbar and I love those rascally Holmes bros. But both the writing and the story were inelegant and boring.

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Mar 30, 2019 Amatullah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adventure, forever-favorites

First off, the Goodreads summary is kinda way off. Or not. Well, most of it is true, but no one goes to China, that's for sure.
Anyways. I've outgrown middle grade long ago, finding good YA requires picking through too many cringy fantasies and angsty books, and adult--well, let's just say I too often bump into a pot of stuff I'd rather not read. Which is why a book like this one--a clean, interesting adult fiction-- is GOLD to me.
The plot was fascinating. The writing...well, I can't quite say. I First off, the Goodreads summary is kinda way off. Or not. Well, most of it is true, but no one goes to China, that's for sure.
Anyways. I've outgrown middle grade long ago, finding good YA requires picking through too many cringy fantasies and angsty books, and adult--well, let's just say I too often bump into a pot of stuff I'd rather not read. Which is why a book like this one--a clean, interesting adult fiction-- is GOLD to me.
The plot was fascinating. The writing...well, I can't quite say. It was fancy but that fit the book, and writing--so long as it's not garish or iverly simplistic--rarely bothers me.
The plot is fascinating. Threads and webs, Holmes mysteries are rarely the type you can solve as you read and instincts at the beginning of the book have a remarkable end-up-true rate, but they do keep you reading. And then, of course, the characters.
Even though it is Douglas's cargo in the ship that runs aground, Douglas's boys' home that is such an integral part of the story, he kinda takes a back seat in this one. He's still Mycroft's best friend. He's still a full character, helping Mycroft investigate, interacting with the boys, and trying to deal with Sherlock. But the book is, after all, "Mycroft and Sherlock". This one is largely about the brothers.
Mycroft has changed since the last book, as he and Douglas acknowledge. He's dealing with his career, a his past, his future, a startling personal relationship...and Sherlock. We learn a lot about the Holmes brothers' relationship here...Mycroft, it seems, is trying to raise Sherlock. And if the last book was meant to tell us how My rodt became who he is, and this book was a bit of continuance on that, this one is meant to show us how Sherlock became who he is.
Honestly? Sherlock stole the show for me. I guess some people would find him seriously annoying...but I liked him. I think it was Sherlock, his new band of child devotees, and his wilder investigations that I enjoyed the most.
While Mycroft and Douglas are working 'the case', Sherlock conducts his own, more clandestine investigations which should have been interconnected with the others, but due to his and Mycroft's tendencies for secrets, tend to run parallel to each other. sherlock.is hardly more than a kid...not yet nineteen, old enough for Douglas's boys to view him as an adult but young enough that he is himself, to all other characters, a boy, not a man. He keeps his secrets close to his chest, even from the reader, and there's a lot we don't understand or really know until the very end...nice plot twisting, by the way, took something that we know to be obviously Tru from the very beginning and add SO MANY DETAILS I did NOT expect.
*SPOILER** (excuse me until I can fix this on my laptop)
It's at the end we find out this has really been Sherlock's book all along. Some people might complain about the pacing...life doesn't often pace very well. I was fine with it.
*END SPOILER ;) ****
The ending was sad, though. Life, I suppose. And...Mycroft and Sherlock, prequel to the the actual stories. Being a person who cries easily while reading I almost did, which I will never admit to my siblings (unless they decide to actually read this while review...)
But yes. Like I said at the beginning...gold. ...more

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Sep 15, 2019 Timothy rated it it was amazing

I had no idea Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a author of fiction. I guess he has written a few of these. This is my first. Well paced and interesting. I’ve enjoyed the book. A good addition to the Sherlock Holmes tradition.

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Dec 11, 2018 Christian rated it really liked it

Three-and-a-half but closer to four stars. Didn't realize this was the second in a series, but I wasn't confused or anything while reading it. Really, the biggest reason I picked up the book was because I saw Kareem the Dream's name on the cover and remembered that he was recently hired as a staff writer on the new season of my all-time favorite show, Veronica Mars. So glad I picked it up because Kareem and Ms. Waterhouse can write! This book moves at breakneck speed and really does an incredibl ...more

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Dec 25, 2019 Lauren Stoolfire rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, mystery

Mycroft and Sherlock by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse is an excellent read for fans of the classic detective. It's a great continuation of the series and it's nice to see their young Sherlock get a bit of a bigger role this time around whereas book one primarily focused on Mycroft. Here we get to see Sherlock before he becomes the world famous police consultant. The coolest cameo in this installment is Joseph Bell, aka the real life surgeon who inspired Sherlock Holmes. This could be r ...more

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Jan 10, 2020 Jenna rated it it was ok

Shelves: book-group-books

As a reader of mysteries, i do like Sherlock. But i really prefer the stories in visual format (ie. plays, tv, movies). Truthfully, i found the Doyle books a bit dull.

But since this was for my book group & i do like books that put a different spin on common/popular characters.
I liked the spin of it being a young Sherlock & the early days of Mycroft's career in govt. As well as an attempt at explaining how someone soooo smart could become a drug addict.

That aside, this just wasn't for me.
it was ...more

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Jul 05, 2020 Angela Becerra Vidergar rated it it was amazing

This second installation did not disappoint. The historical context of normalized, legal use of opium and derivatives was terrifyingly quotidian. I am really loving the "prequel" feel of getting to know the Holmes brothers in their early days, including their subtle personality differences and Sherlock as an infuriating teenager. KAJ and Waterhouse also do a beautiful job of portraying the people of various ethnicities in these stories in nuanced, deeply humanizing ways while showing the histori ...more

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Dec 02, 2020 Joan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, adult-books, mysteries

This was an addition to his series on Mycroft Holmes. I enjoyed it but lost a couple of the twists and turns. It fits right in to the time period and the cultures mentioned (English, of course, but also Chinese) and did a good job. Some was a bit predictable, based on having read the Canon. Honestly, both Mycroft and Sherlock come off as self centered arrogant rather uncaring men. Sherlock is a teen at the time, so has some excuse but Mycroft needs some lessons in kindness as well, as even his b ...more

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Nov 01, 2018 Andrea Johnson rated it really liked it

The 2nd of Jabbar’s books about Mycroft & Sherlock Holmes is well-written and entertaining. He does a good job of bringing the characters to life and letting the readers get to know them better. Thoroughly enjoyable read.

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Mar 25, 2019 Ryan Mishap rated it it was ok

Shelves: mystery-crime

A fairly enjoyable mystery is bogged down by trying too hard: too many convoluted sentences attempting to replicate Victorian speech, too many info details trying too hard to replicate the time and place, and so forth.

I do enjoy the characterizations of Mycroft and Sherlock in this series, but Douglas was seriously under-utilized here.

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Mar 18, 2019 Llyr Heller-Humphreys rated it really liked it

Although it took me a long time to read, it was a very good book and looking at the ending, I certainly hope there's a third book on the way. ...more

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Oct 01, 2019 Marjorie Hogan rated it really liked it

As someone who has read and loved anything to do with Sherlock Holmes for decades, I enjoyed this book. Certainly not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but Mr.Abdul-Jabber is a gifted writer and knows how to craft a plot and create a character!

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Nov 26, 2019 Nathan Brant rated it it was amazing

I can't say enough good things about this series. The plot is worth of - and perhaps surpassing - Doyle. The characters are delightful. I can't wait to see another tale of the Brothers Holmes. Well done Mr. Abdul-Jabbar. ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Jerry Yoakum rated it it was amazing

Great job of portraying a young Sherlock and explaining why Mycroft didn't go on to more adventures like he had in the first Mycroft book. ...more

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Jan 07, 2020 Jen rated it really liked it

These are so good!

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Jun 13, 2020 Jeanie rated it really liked it

Mycroft and Sherlock back again, with new and intriguing mysteries to solve.

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Oct 09, 2020 Kristi Clemow rated it it was amazing

Shelves: old-challenges, audible, book-roast

I've read all 3 and the 1st is my favorite but this one is also very good. ...more

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Nov 10, 2019 Juli rated it really liked it

Equally as exciting and fun, glad I grabbed the series all at once!

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Sep 23, 2020 Jennifer rated it really liked it

#2 in the series and equally as enjoyable as the first.

Mycroft continues to take the MC role here, and of course, Sherlock continues to grow into some of his more annoying characteristics. Douglas and Huan are back in this installment as well.

There's the murders of several Oriental gentlemen, followed in the same gruesome manner, of some white men. Are these murders connected, since the method was the same? And what about the growing opium addictions growing among all the classes of citizens?

T ...more

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Feb 27, 2020 Janet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: set-in-the-united-kingdom, 1800s-1920s, finished, mystery

Abdul-Jabbar offers a convincing reason behind a particular quirk of the original (that is, Conan Doyle’s) Mycroft--his extreme reluctance to physically exert himself. Although written many decades apart, Abdul-Jabbar’s Mycroft tends to merge with Conan Doyle’s in my mind.

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Jan 20, 2019 Brenda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, mysteries, fiction, historical-fiction, 55

If only all mysteries were this good! Top marks to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse for this exciting and entertaining addition to the Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes universe. Mycroft is back in England after his trip to Trinidad (Mycroft Holmes), and Sherlock, in his late teens, is quite smitten with crime solving, although he is supposed to be learning Latin in preparation for university. But gruesome murders are being committed in London, touching on the lives of friends of Mycroft and Sh ...more

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Jan 16, 2019 Harvey rated it liked it

Shelves: crime-mystery-read-in-2018

Nice to see this becoming a fine series. Like the addition of young Sherlock into the mix.

Will look forward to the next.

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Mar 05, 2020 ShanDizzy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

So far, this is a great continuation of Kareem's 1st Mycroft story and I think Kareem has come into his own in expanding Doyle's Mycroft character. I feel that his stories are not as much a pastiche as it is a spin-off since, in my mind when reading these stories, Mycroft is alive and larger than life apart from his iconic brother. ...more

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About Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. on April 16, 1947 in New York City, New York, United States) is an American former professional basketball player and current assistant coach. Typically referred to as Lew Alcindor in his younger days, he changed his name when he converted to Islam.