This one took me by surprise: NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is teaming with writer Anna Waterhouse to tackle Sherlock Holmes in MYCROFT HOLMES, a Sherlockian novel slated to be released, by Titan Books, this fall.
Kareem and Anna have a relationship that evolved over the production of ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS, an award-winning documentary about the Harlem Rens basketball team. The two are now turning their attention to one of Kareem’s loves: Sherlock Holmes. I had no idea, but he apparently is a huge fan and has been for decades. Abdul-Jabbar first met the iconic detective through the Basil Rathbone films. He then, early in his NBA career, devoured Doyle’s stories and became a devotee. For the record, he considers Jeremy Brett to be the best Holmes.
After reading ENTER THE LION: A Posthumous Memoir of Mycroft Holmes, Kareem became intrigued with Sherlock’s older brother Mycroft. “I realized more could be done with this ‘older, smarter’ character and his window onto the highest levels of British government—at a time when Britain was the most powerful country in the world.”
Fresh out of university, Mycroft is working for Edward Cardwell, the British Secretary of State for War, and is already proving himself as a shrewd player in the British government. His best friend is Cyrus Douglas, a man of African descent born and raised in Trinidad, where Mycroft’s new fiancée, Georgiana, also was raised.
Cyrus hears troubling news from home: mysterious disappearances; strange, backwards-facing footprints on the sand; spirits enticing children to their deaths. Holmes’s fiancée receives the same
news, abruptly panics, and departs for Trinidad. Mycroft, worried to death for her, talks Cyrus into following her on this hazardous journey, drawing them all into a web of dark secrets that grow more insidious and baffling with each step they take.
Sherlock Holmes will appear as a student at King’s College, along with enticing hints about the ‘true state’ of the Holmes family—and the painful legacy that the brothers endure. The tragedies that
Mycroft encounters in this adventure are the seeds that will eventually turn him into the reclusive genius ‘power’ behind the British government, and the founder of the famous Diogenes Club
