The empty birdcage A novel

""The Fire 411!"" is the cryptic note left behind at a series of seemingly unconnected murders across 1873 England. The victims are solitary individuals with no close family. Nineteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is fascinated by the case and is working up a theory from newspaper accounts. But he wants to get on the trail of the killer in person. He's within a month of finishing his studies at Cambridge, and he'll need to secure the funds for the trip from his older brother, Mycroft, who has his own mystery to solve. The fiancé of the woman for whom he's carried a torch for years has disappeared. Though she's promised to another, he feels obligated to relieve her pain by finding her loved one. The brothers set out on their separate quests, eventually coming to the same sad conclusion: much of the evil in the world is grounded in greed. This third collaboration from NBA Hall-of-Famer Abdul-Jabbar, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and author of 15 books, and screenwriter Waterhouse is another thoroughly entertaining mystery, with great appeal for Holmesians, in particular, and fans of Victorian mysteries, in general.--Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2010 Booklist

Abdul-Jabbar and Waterhouse's third pastiche (after 2018's Mycroft and Sherlock), their best yet, provides intriguing challenges for both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes while continuing to present plausible backstories for the brothers. In 1873, Mycroft and his longtime friend and partner, Cyrus Douglas, agree to help Chinese businessman Deshi Hai Lin locate Bingwen Shi, the fiancé of Lin's daughter, Ai, who happens to be an old flame of Mycroft's. Shi, a land investor, disappeared in London en route to a meeting with a client. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Sherlock, who's not yet an encyclopedia of knowledge relevant to detecting crime, gets himself tossed out of college so he can tackle a sensational serial murder case. Someone has killed eight people across Great Britain, leaving near each corpse a note bearing the message "The Fire 411!" That the victims appear to have nothing in common adds to the puzzle. The authors do a stellar job of illuminating the siblings' developing relationship while concocting a clever and twisty plot. Sherlockians will be enthralled. Agent: Deborah Morales, Iconomy. (Sept.)

A third round of Victorian detection and domestic friction for the imperishable Holmes brothers.If there had been a 24-hour news cycle in 1873, every hour would have been devoted to the Fire 411 killer, whose murders would never have been identified as such if he hadn't insisted on leaving his calling card at each crime scene, a message reading "The Fire 411!" The eight victims to date, ranging from a boy of 7 and a girl of 10 up to a retired barrister in his 80s, have been so marginal that the case wouldn't have enticed Mycroft, addict and sometime foreign agent, if the ninth victim, Elise Wickham, weren't the stepdaughter of Queen Victoria's cousin Count Wolfgang Hohenlohe-Langenburg. In fact, the Count, a bully and a swindler, had already attracted the attention of Mycroft and his Trinidadian friend, Cyrus Douglas, who now must switch gears smoothly from seeking evidence of him to solving his stepdaughter's murder to accommodate the queen. Their novel solution is to farm the case out to Mycroft's younger brother, who's a student at Downing College, Cambridge. Sherlock's eagerness to follow the crooked trail of the Fire 911 killer leaves Mycroft free to oblige shipping magnate Deshi Hai Lin, whose life he saved in Mycroft and Sherlock (2018) and who now, as if he weren't already indebted enough, begs Mycroft's help in seeking and recovering Bingwen Shi, the fiance of his lovely daughter, Ai Lin. The decision to assign each of the feuding brothers to a separate case is great for the family peace, but it soft-pedals a leading attraction of the series and produces enough back-and-forth plotting to put most readers in serious danger of whiplash. Against all odds, the riddle behind the kidnapping turns out to be more interesting, more surprising, and more logical than that of the Fire 411 killer.All the usual pleasuresblood and thunder, sibling rivalry, historical walk-onsbut no great shakes as a mystery. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.