Sherlock Holmes is a government official. Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of human database for all aspects of government policy. He lacks Sherlock's interest in physical investigation, however, preferring to spend his time at the Diogenes Club. Holmes says that he first developed his methods of deduction as an undergraduate; his earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students. A meeting with a classmate's father led him to adopt detection as a profession, and he spent several years after university as a consultant before financial difficulties led him to accept John H.
Sherlock Holmes pastiches Friends Investigate. Mycroft Holmes, Dr John Watson and Professor George Challenger also appear in the same book. Boris Akunin's short story "The Prisoner of the Tower, or A Short But Beautiful Journey of Three Wise Men" in the "Jade Rosary Beads" compilation describes Holmes and Erast Fandorin's race to thwart a devious extortion plan by Arsène Lupin. Author Nancy Springer writes a series of novels of the adventures of Enola Holmes, the much younger teenage sister of Sherlock and Mycroft. Upon their mother's disappearance, Enola discovers that she in fact left of her own volition according to a carefully devised