A review by hartd
Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Anna Waterhouse

I enjoyed this. Mycroft Holmes and Cyrus Douglas are both great characters, and there's a lot of banter and affection between them. They definitely have a similar dynamic to Sherlock & Watson. The various mysteries in the story were all pretty lurid, too, in the same vein as the original Sherlock Holmes stories and their adaptations. The novel takes place mostly on Trinidad, and deals a lot with race. In addition to Douglas, there are some interesting PoC side characters, too.

But there was a major plot point that disturbed me.

Spoiler

Mycroft's fiancee Georgiana turns out to be a villain. That's fine, I don't object to female villains at all. But I didn't like that her behavior was framed as an example of the fickleness of women, and she was the only prominent female character in the book. She wasn't fickle; she had a plan all along, but Mycroft doesn't react to her betrayal as though she is actually capable of evil.

So, I'm not sure if I'm glad to have read this or not. But it's always strange for me to dip into mainstream books and get confronted with things like that; I'm very happy mostly reading books that are totally to my taste. Anyway, other readers probably wouldn't have the same objection I did. I'm not going to give it a star rating because I feel conflicted.