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
Detective fiction whose V. I. Warshawski books have explored the various subcultures of Chicago. Martin Hewitt, created by British author Arthur Morrison in 1894, is one of the first examples of the modern style of fictional private detective. This character is described as an "'Everyman' detective meant to challenge the detective-as-superman that Holmes represented." By the late 1920s, Al Capone and the Mob were inspiring not only fear, but piquing mainstream curiosity about the American crime underworld. Popular pulp fiction magazines like "Black Mask" capitalized on this, as authors such as Carrol John Daly published violent stories that focused on the mayhem