Title: The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes
Author: Marcel Theroux
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harcourt Books
Copyright: 2001
ISBN: 0156007436
Pages: 216
Keywords: fiction
Reading period: 16-17 February, 2007

This book is not a Sherlockian pastiche, although Mycroft Holmes does appear in two short stories within the story.

Damien March is a 30ish researcher at the BBC, who unexpectedly inherits a house on a remote island off Cape Cod, from his late uncle Patrick, a once-successful novelist. He moves to Ionia and slowly starts inhabiting the life of Patrick. Brothers are a recurring theme throughout this book: Patrick and Damien's father; Damien and his brother Vivian; Mycroft and Sherlock; and others. Damien comes to an understanding and a reconciliation of some of those fractured relationships.

One wonders how much of Patrick's character is inspired by Marcel Theroux's father, Paul.

This book drags in the first half, but held my interest in the latter half. Certainly a novel of ideas, rather than of action.