I do love the cover for Mycroft Holmes, but I just don't know if I could cope with Holmes not written by ACD. My past experiences with such things weren't great.
No, I get it - Mycroft is completely wrong here and if I'd known before I started the book, I wouldn't have even tried reading it and if it were part of a series, I wouldn't read any of the others. But it's easy to suck me into a story if it's good and well written, and this is both. So I grumbled about the Mycroft discrepancies the entire time I read it, but I read it. I'm a sucker. :)
Oddly enough, the few times Sherlock makes brief appearances, he's actually really faithfully represented, so Mycroft's deviation doesn't come from a lack of canon knowledge.
That just makes it even weirder, doesn't it? If the authors know the canon and actually show that they can pull off a character that is faithful to the original, then why can they not do it for the main character?
It does, but I imagine a scenario where they wanted to use the Holmes genius, but tell a rollicking adventure story that featured a rarely used topic (immediate post US civil war years) - so they picked Mycroft because very few people would be likely to know who he is beyond the eccentric character Fry played in the Sherlock Holmes movie.
Oddly enough, the few times Sherlock makes brief appearances, he's actually really faithfully represented, so Mycroft's deviation doesn't come from a lack of canon knowledge.