Mycroft Holmes (novel) seek answers. Holmes and Douglas follow her to the island and are confronted with dark mysteries. Having been a fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories as a child, Abdul-Jabbar specifically chose to write about Mycroft as he felt that there was already an abundance of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Reading Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright's "Enter the Lion: A Posthumous Memoir of Mycroft Holmes" caused Abdul-Jabbar to realize "more could be done with this ‘older, smarter’ character and his window on to the highest levels of British government – at a time when Britain was the most powerful
Jack Spratt (fictional detective) happily married with five children. In addition, he is shown in the beginning of "The Big Over Easy" to be an experienced and accomplished police detective, but low on self-confidence, virtually incapable of securing convictions and never recognized for the ones he does make. The reason for this is that police funding is based on public approval, which is in turn influenced by the news magazine "Amazing Crime Stories". This enormously popular "true crime" magazine prints glamorous police cases--usually involving noir clichés like secret societies, mafia assassins and baffling, meticulously planned murders--that are allegedly true and unedited, but actually largely