The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter Sherlock Holmes, far from being a one-off in terms of his powers of observation and deductive reasoning, in fact has an elder brother whose skills, or so Holmes claims, outstrip even his own. As a consequence of this, Watson becomes acquainted with the Diogenes Club and his friend's brother, Mycroft. Mycroft, as Watson learns, does not have the energy of his younger brother and as a consequence is incapable of using his great skills for detective work: In spite of his inertia, the elder Holmes has often delivered the correct answer to a problem that Sherlock has brought to him.
Sherlock Holmes pastiches Misplaced Hound". In Robert A. Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" (1966), one of the characters is a computer, a model "HOLMES IV", which adopts the name Mycroft, after Sherlock Holmes' brother. Julian Symons created a character named Sheridan Haynes, an actor immersed in the role of Holmes for an epic project to adapt the entire canon for television (almost ten years before Jeremy Brett took up a similar challenge), in the 1975 novel "A Three Pipe Problem". Haynes finds himself confusing his own identity with Holmes', and becomes involved in a mystery. The character returned for a 1988