The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase [Hardcover]

Marcel Theroux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2001

Damien March hadn't thought of his eccentric uncle for almost twenty years until he received a telegram: Patrick dead. Father. Damien, a journalist for the BBC in London, is even more shocked to learn that he has inherited his uncle's ramshackle house on Ionia, an isolated island off the coast of Cape Cod. Damien's step into a new future means moving circuitously into his family's past. He uncovers letters and writings-scattered clues that shed light on Patrick's solitary life. When he discovers a fragment of an unpublished novel, The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes, the stakes in this paper chase are suddenly higher. Mycroft Holmes, the older brother of Sherlock, is one of literature's most intriguing absences. A neglected genius who lived in obscurity, he bears a striking resemblance to Patrick himself. The parallels quickly grow more disconcerting, and a sinister tale of murder and deception takes on new meaning. Soon Damien finds himself revealing dark and unsettling truths that shatter his most fundamental assumptions.

Written with warmth and distinctive humor, The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes is at once an engaging mystery and an illuminating story about family secrets and identity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How many times have you wanted a new life? Would you exchange yours for someone else's? These are the questions faced by Damien March in the opening pages of Marcel Theroux's Confessions of Mycroft Holmes. After his uncle Patrick's death, Damien learns that he has inherited a ramshackle property on the isolated island of Ionia, off the coast of Cape Cod. Should he abandon his life in London--and his career as a BBC journalist--and head west? That he does. But once he reaches the house, he's confronted with decades' worth of collected junk, which Patrick's will explicitly prevents him from discarding.

Damien also meets a number of characters on the island, all of them part of his late uncle's life. One of these acquaintances unknowingly delivers to him an unfinished manuscript that Patrick was writing about Sherlock Holmes's brother, Mycroft. The story arouses Damien's suspicions about his uncle's black-sheep existence. Ultimately, though, it leads him to discover the truth about his own family--and himself. His sudden plunge into the hard facts brings to mind "that moment suspended between the rock and the ocean when you bunch your knees up and anticipate the cold shock of the water." And by the end of the novel, Damien is enlightened: his search has answered questions he did not even know to ask. --Elizabeth Potter

From Publishers Weekly

Although this tale of a man's investigation into the truth of his family history is written with much shrewd wit and a sensitive eye for the nuances of human failure, it delivers too little, too late. The main thread of the story is promising. Damien March, an American-born BBC journalist, inherits a house from an eccentric novelist uncle in the States. He soon scraps his job and goes to live on his uncle's dilapidated estate on an island off the coast of Cape Cod. Shortly after he moves there, numerous seemingly disconnected events occur. He meets a deaf neighbor and her two children. He is robbed. One of his uncle's eccentric ex-girlfriends comes poking about the estate. Then Damien lays his hands on a box of his uncle's manuscripts. Included in the box is the start of a whimsical mystery to be solved by Sherlock Holmes's wiser older brother, Mycroft. Not so whimsically, this mystery, with its close resemblance in plot and cast to the actual history and population of the island, suggests that Damien's uncle may have killed his deaf neighbor's brutish drunkard husband many years ago. This catalogue of a complex character's past is intriguing, and Theroux's prose is by turns lyrical and elegant, but the buildup to the discovery of the pivotal manuscript is long-drawn-out and tedious. This second novel by Theroux stands as a pleasant but unremarkable follow-up to A Stranger in the Earth, mildly frustrating, mildly entertaining and generally innocuous. (Mar.) Forecast: An East Coast author tour should draw audiences curious about Theroux as a writer in his own right, but also as a literary scion. And if media pick up on the tantalizing parallels with Theroux family history Paul Theroux, Marcel's father, also owns a house on Cape Cod the roman ? clef factor may spark sales.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (March 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151006474
• ISBN-13: 978-0151006472
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,048,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marcel Theroux is the author of four novels, A Blow to the Heart, A Stranger in the Earth, The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, and most recently, Far North, which is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like a breath of fresh air., April 2, 2001

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase (Hardcover)

This book is filled with delights, not least of which is the light, deft touch the author employs as he deals charmingly with important and weighty issues of family relationships--fathers with sons, and brothers with each other. There's a freshness and gentleness of tone here that might even be cloying were it not for the acerbic, sometimes boisterous, humor which the author uses to leaven his narrative and keep his issues in perspective. Though there is a mystery at the heart of the novel, it's a quiet mystery, more important for the lessons it illuminates than for any thrills it may provide.

Damien March, the main character, is an expatriate American living in London and working for the BBC. Although he's had no contact with his uncle Patrick for twenty years, he finds himself the sudden beneficiary of his uncle's estate on Ionia, a fictional island off Cape Cod, an island which resembles Martha's Vineyard of the past. The only catch is that he must not change the interior of the house, which is packed with bric-a-brac. When he decides to spend six months living in the house, he discovers several unpublished stories by his uncle, all concerning Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes's mysterious brother, who has committed a terrible crime, but for worthy reasons. The parallels Damien sees between Mycroft Holmes's relationship with Sherlock and his uncle Patrick's relationship with Damien's father lead him to investigate the crime and, ultimately, to come to a new understanding of what family means and what its enduring values may be.

It is possible that this fictional story reflects either directly or obliquely on the author's own relationship with his author-father, Paul Theroux, his author-uncle Alexander Theroux, his British TV-host-brother Louis, and the relationship of the elder Theroux brothers with each other. While these overlaps will provide tantalizing and fertile grounds for biographers, they are irrelevant to one's enjoyment of this narrative. Marcel Theroux, however, certainly seems to welcome such speculation by setting of this novel off Cape Cod, where Paul Theroux lives, and by his references to Medford, where the elder Theroux authors grew up. The accurate Cape Cod descriptions, the "Yankee spirit," and the unpretentious lives so well illustrated by the peripheral characters here add immeasurably to the realism of this delightful study of family values. A captivating novel. Mary Whipple

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Charming Novel, April 29, 2001

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase (Hardcover)

The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes is charming and funny work in a small package. At just over 200 pages, this one won't take you very long to get through, which is a shame because it's such a lovely ride. Damien March, is a sort of British/American amalgamation, as is his family. When his Uncle Patrick dies, and bequests his home, albeit with many limiting strings attached, to Damien, Damien leaves his London life for life on an island in New England, where Patrick's ramshackle home is. Damien comes to the US and gives us many bemused, amusing observations about American culture, given in an amusing fashion from one who sort of belongs in the US anyway. Damien finds an old manuscript of his uncle's, the Confession of Mycroft Holmes. The novel sends Damien on a journey he had technically begun when he left England, a journey which brings Damien a surprising discovery. It's a lovely story, told in charming fashion. Enjoy this one.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not about Sherlock or Mycroft Holmes..., July 7, 2002

By 

R. McGowan "rick-and-roo" (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase (Hardcover)

Nicely written and engaging, this book is well worth reading. Some of the other reviews cover details of plot, so I'll say only that I found it a good read with few shortcomings. But readers who are looking for a Sherlock Holmes story should be warned that this isn't about Mycroft or Sherlock.