Enola Holmes

As previous posts have indicated, I am a great fan of Sherlock Holmes. I am also a purist when it comes to my favorite characters. I am not a great fan of adding to or taking away from their known history. Therefore, I was very hesitant to read an Enola Holmes mystery. As conceived by Nancy Springer, Enola is the much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. My curiosity finally won out and I read The Case of The Missing Marquess. I was pleasantly surprised and extremely glad that I did.

The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery
by Nancy Springer
A 2007 nominee for the Edgar Best Juvenile Mystery

Enola is everything that you would imagine a Holmes family member to be - intelligent, resilient, self-reliant, and quick witted.

The first few chapters are a little slow moving but necessary to prepare the reader to accept and understand why a younger sister of the famous brothers could be unknown to their admiring public. But when the action eventually begins, it begins with a bang and never lags until it reaches a satisfying conclusion.

On her fourteenth birthday, Enola Holmes’ mother mysteriously disappears. Enola has for all intents and purposes been left to take care of herself on the Holmes' country estate, Ferndell Hall. She has had no contact with her brothers since their father’s death ten years earlier. But her telegram to them telling of their missing mother brings them back into her life. They arrive to find things very different from what they expected. The estate is neglected. There are only two servants. As Enola tells her horrified Victorian siblings, she had educated herself by reading “every book in Ferndell Hall’s library, from A Child’s Garden of Verses to the entire Encyclopedia Britannica” including Shakespeare, Aristotle, Locke, and the essays of Mary Wollstonecraft. This was definitely not the proper education for a young lady of those times.

Mycroft and Sherlock reached the conclusion that their mother had embezzled all the funds they had been sending for the upkeep of Ferndell Hall and the care of Enola and had run away to live a life of freedom few women at that time could have. They decided to transform Enola into a proper Victorian young lady. She was to be dressed appropriately (corseted) and sent to boarding school. However, Enola had other plans. Her name, as her mother had often reminded her, spelled backwards reads alone and that Enola was capable of caring for herself - alone. Which she did, ingeniously escaping her brothers’ clutches to begin her own search for their mother.

Ciphers have been very popular in young adult books in recent years - Chasing Vermeer and The Mysterious Benedict Society are two that come to mind. For Enola’s birthday, her mother left her a gift that made no sense to Enola - drawing materials, a hand made book entitled the Meaning of Flowers, and a book on ciphers. Enola would cleverly learn that this was her mother’s cipher - clues to a means that would allow Enola to continue her independent lifestyle. Enola eventually arrived in London where after rescuing a missing young lord she decided on a course that would completely change her life.

I knew things Sherlock Holmes failed even to imagine. . . . In fact, while Sherlock Holmes dismissed 'the fair sex' as irrational and insignificant, I knew of matters his 'logical' mind could never grasp. I knew an entire world of communications belonging to women, secret codes of hat brims and rebellion, handkerchiefs and subterfuge, feather fans and covert defiance, sealing-wax and messages in the positioning of a postage-stamp, calling cards and a cloak of ladylike conspiracy in which I could wrap myself. I expected that without much difficulty I could incorporate weaponry as well as defense and supplies into a corset. I could go places and accomplish things Sherlock Holmes could never understand or imagine, much less do.

And I planned to.

I enjoy well researched mysteries. They allow me to be an arm chair traveler not only of beautiful geographical locals like national parks and the architectural wonders of distant cities but also of fascinating time periods both past and future. This is a well researched mystery. Springer took me into the dark areas of late nineteenth century London in a most realistic way. Young readers should be aware that this is a London of danger and cruelty and horrors.

In my book . . . Enola is a worthy Holmes, a worthy early warrior in the battle for the recognition of women as beings capable of intelligent thought and decisions, and a worthy sister to be adopted by Nancy Drew. I eagerly look forward to more of her adventures. Let the games begin!

Saturday Review of Books Challenge - Book 6

Good Intentions!
Procrastination!
Identification!

I completely identify with the students who come to me frantic for the condensed version or the shortest book on the approved list for their book report which is due in four days! Of course, the condensed version or the shortest book has already been checked out by their fellow students who also don’t want to read anything without a picture on every other page or has more than 100 pages. But I love them anyway and convince them that they really can finish their assignment. In that vein and to prove to them that they can accomplish that goal, I confess my procrastination and finish my challenge in four days!

I am substituting a title that is on the list of Saturday Review of Books but that is not on my list of choices for the Challenge. I did not obtain The Goose Girl in time - note my identification with students; however, in my favor I did not choose to substitute The Penderwicks or A Wrinkle in Time both of which are on the approved list and for which I have already done reviews.

I am choosing as my replacement The Hound of the Baskervilles which I promise I had not read until this fall. Yes, I read many books during the fall - just not my assignment - again note my identification with students. I read Hound just after my completion of A Drowned Maiden’s Hair; and if you read that review, you will notice my mention of Arthur Conan Doyle. I have read many, many of Sherlock Holmes' cases and have watched many, many cinematic versions of The Hound. As an aside, in my opinion Jeremy Brett is the Sherlock!

The Hound of the Baskervilles
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I feel completely inadequate to review this book. What more can be said about the incomparable Sherlock Holmes? All I can say is I loved it. The mystery genre is my genre of choice. I am happiest with a good mystery in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. My favorite authors cannot write fast enough to please me. Many literary scholars credit Poe with developing the detective novel. But along with many others, I think that Sherlock is the epitome of the Great Detective.

'The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?'

'A fixture also.'

'On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire.'

'In spirit?'

'Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamfords for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that i could find my way about.'

'We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork,' said Dr. Mortimer.

'Say rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation.'

The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.'

Doyle takes the reader to a place where it is perfectly logical that a mystical beast could exist.

'I say, Watson,' said the baronet, 'what would Holmes say to this? How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil is exalted?'

As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it dies away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness.

And then, as always, Holmes gets his man!

In my book . . . What could be better on a cold winter night that to curl up with a book that takes one to foggy London town and hear “The game is afoot.”?