The title of Marcel Theroux's second novel is an exquisitely calculated mockery; Sibling rivalry in high-class literary families has been a hot topic long before William James described Henry as his "younger, superficial, vain brother." Mycroft Holmes is Sherlock's older, smarter, lazier brother, a dark but nevertheless vivid occasional. presence in the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (He has a nebulous but powerful role as "the most indispensable man in the country," according to Sherlock. Among the only certain things about him, Theroux reminds us, "is that he's very fat, and a member of the Diogenes Club, where the conversation is banned. Marcel is the son of Paul Theroux; a section of his father's extraordinarily entertaining book on VS Naipaul, "The Shadow of Sir Vidia", elaborated with what seemed taste on the theme that a brother is always the inferior literary of the other. Many readers felt that these passages tapped into feelings towards Alexander Theroux, Paul's writer brother. And then there is the fact that Marcel's brother Louis has achieved fame in Britain ( where they both grew up) as a television documentary host. As Sherlock Holmes might have said, these are murky waters, Watson Having created expectations with the title, "The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes" plays with them mercilessly Marcel Theroux's intelligent book is subtitled "A Paper Chase" and, although this detracts from the underlying seriousness and sadness of the novel, it captures the way in which the reader is led, a... medium of paper... .... your neighbors rather than trying to make friends and discovering that you actually hate each other.'' This is profoundly accurate, and is borne out by observations from across the Atlantic. Patrick's lawyer on Ionia had "that strange American gift - or is it some kind of callousness?" -- to talk all the time and still seem able to form a distinct and favorable impression of one's personality.'' The jokes are good, even in their timing. Patrick's education had left him with "an almost entirely useless set of skills: basic colloquial seminary Latin, good Samoan, a degree in English literature." The book ultimately ends up being about the brothers, and also about the ways in which "the imagination wanders the world until it finds a predicament that reflects its own secret agonies"..''