Mycroft Holmes and the Edinburgh Affair

Sherlockians will find little resemblance between Conan Doyle’s Mycroft Holmes and the James Bondian Secret Service agent portrayed in Woods’s sequel to 2017’s Mycroft Holmes and the Adventure of the Desert Wind. Engaged at the novel’s start in hand-to-hand combat with assassins as he travels by train from Eastern Europe to the French coast, Mycroft archly remarks: “It was hard to come up with a good reason why I should be outside my train carriage in the middle of this freezing winter night, armed with a particularly heavy frying pan.” Once back in London, Mycroft, who repeatedly refers to Dr. Watson as a dog, is confronted with the unsettling news that someone has spelled out his first name using human body parts on the bank of the Thames, part of a campaign of terror targeting him. The motive, predictably, lies in the operative’s past, and the plot and reveals are all too familiar. Those looking for a more plausible, thought-through depiction of this classic character should turn to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse’s forthcoming Mycroft and Sherlock. (Oct.)