Mycroft and Sherlock

It is 1872, and a series of gruesome murders is the talk of London. Mycroft Holmes—now twenty-six and a force to be reckoned with at the War Office—has no interest in the killings; however his brother Sherlock has developed a distasteful fascination for the macabre to the detriment of his studies, much to Mycroft’s frustration. When a ship carrying cargo belonging to Mycroft’s best friend Cyrus Douglas runs aground, Mycroft persuades Sherlock to serve as a tutor at the orphanage that Douglas runs as a charity, so that Douglas might travel to see what can be salvaged. Sherlock finds himself at home among the street urchins, and when a boy dies of a suspected drug overdose, he decides to investigate, following a trail of strange subterranean symbols to the squalid opium dens of the London docks. Meanwhile a meeting with a beautiful Chinese woman leads Mycroft to the very same mystery, one that forces him to examine the underbelly of the opium trade that is enriching his beloved Britain’s coffers.As the stakes rise, the brothers find that they need one another’s assistance and counsel. But a lifetime of keeping secrets from each other may have catastrophic consequences…

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a huge Holmesian--7'2" tall, basketball's all-time leading scorer, and a U.S. cultural ambassador. He's written extensively, including What Color is My World (children's), Brothers in Arms (military history), and On the Shoulders of Giants (black history). His novel Mycroft Holmes, starring Sherlock Holmes less well known but far more talented older brother, was published in 2015. Anna Waterhouse is a professional screenwriter and script consultant. She was supervising producer and co-writer (with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) of the critically acclaimed On the Shoulders of Giants (Netflix and Showtime), which won the "Best Documentary" NAACP Image Award and two Telly awards in 2012. She has written several how-to screenwriting seminars for The Writers Store and teaches screenwriting at Chapman University.