From Crime Reads, September 24, 2019:
Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse
The following is an exclusive excerpt from Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage,
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. A serial killer has been
ravaging London, and when the Queen’s relative is murdered, Mycroft is
called in. But his brother Sherlock has already grown obsessed with the
case. Meanwhile, Mycroft's love has contacted him, begging him to help
her find her missing fiancé, and Mycroft calls upon his friend Cyrus
Douglas to help track him down.
Cambridge, England Thursday, 8 May 1873, 10 a.m.
Most of Downing College, with the exception of the East Lodge, was built of an oolitic limestone known as Ketton stone. On bright days it would glimmer in shades of yellow, from pale daffodil to butterscotch. Students and faculty alike would remark upon its beauty, taking especial pride in its sparkle, as if it were an earthly corner of the New Jerusalem.
Sherlock Holmes assumed that he was alone in finding it insufferable.
A cigarette dangled from his lips, its smoke forcing his eyes into a squint as he walked. His long fingers grazed the newspaper columns that he had carefully cut out, rolled into a bundle, bound with twine, and stuck into his jacket pocket. He’d reached for that little bundle a half-dozen times since leaving his rooms, for lately he had been feeling all nerves, and knowing it was there, close at hand, helped him to concentrate upon his case.
And what a case it was. Eight murders across Great Britain. Though geographically disparate, and though none of the victims had anything in common, they had surely been felled by the same killer, who had commenced his killing the first day of April and had continued with macabre but admirable regularity since then, at the rate of approximately one every four to six days, with one notable week’s hiatus.
The victims thus far included, in order of demise: a young widow; a small-town banker; two boys, aged seven and fourteen, killed separately; a chaplain of middle years; a retired barrister of eighty-four; the proprietor of a horse stable; and a ten-year-old girl. None had enemies to speak of. None had died with any mark of violence upon them. All, in fact, would have been decreed to have succumbed to ‘natural causes’—a catch-all phrase used by law and medicine when no clear reason made itself apparent—were it not for one thing.....MORE
The note.
At each murder site, a note had been left in the proximity of the body, almost always at the moment of death, though twice it had appeared upon the spot several days after the fact, as if to ensure that credit would be given where credit was due.
The message was always the same, four little words:
The Fire Four Eleven!
As Wikipedia says:
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:If interested see also The Strand Magazine: "Top Ten Sherlock Holmes Pastiches"
- new Sherlock Holmes stories;
- stories in which Holmes appears in a cameo role;
- stories about imagined descendants of Sherlock Holmes;
- and stories inspired by Sherlock Holmes but which do not include Holmes himself.
