Brilliant detective Mycroft Holmes--Sherlock's older brother--tackles cases beyond life and death in this reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic mystery series.   When London grows stifling, Mycroft Holmes and his assistant, Sydney Silchester, flee to the English countryside. They rent a charming little house whose sprawling garden boasts a pond, trees, sculpture--and an irresistible mystery. When a dead man is found in the backyard, sitting in the carved throne that forms the garden's centerpiece, an antique hairpin buried deep in his chest, the official verdict is suicide. But Mycroft can't imagine a man could stab himself in the heart. Vacation is over before it's begun; the game is afoot.   The death in the garden is only the beginning. This mystery will take Mycroft and Sydney deeper into the underworld of Victorian England than Sherlock Holmes and John Watson ever dared to tread. Unraveling the incident in the backyard will mean understanding more than a simple murder; it will force Mycroft and Silchester to confront the nature of mystery itself.   An elegantly constructed golden-age mystery, The Notched Hairpin is a brilliant intellectual investigation of what makes detective stories tick. Author H. F. Heard entrances and amazes fans of Victorian adventures with a mystery-solving duo that can more than hold its own against Sherlock and Watson.   The Notched Hairpin is the 3rd book in the Mycroft Holmes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.