First published 2003
Damien March receives a blunt telegram announcing his uncle Patrick's death. The BBC journalist learns he has inherited a crumbling house on Ionia, an island near Cape Cod. He abandons his dull London life for this strange legacy. Damien searches through Patrick's belongings and discovers letters that reveal his uncle's reclusive existence. Among the papers lies a fragment of an unpublished novel titled The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes. Mycroft, Sherlock Holmes's brilliant older brother, lived as a shadowy genius much like Patrick himself. The similarities between his dead uncle and the fictional character disturb Damien. As he digs deeper into the manuscript and Patrick's life, the boundaries blur between reality and fiction. What began as simple curiosity becomes something darker when murder and lies surface from the past.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, mystery, thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Ionia, Cape Cod, London
Period: 20th-century
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