Was Sherlock really the smartest in his family?
a book review by Elizabeth Brodersen
The Missing Marquess is the first book in the Enola Holmes series. It was written in 2006 by author Nancy Springer. Springer has written dozens of other young adult and juvenile novels, including The Tales of Rowan Hood, Larque on the Wing, and The Oddling Prince. Her work has been praised with many awards, including the Tiptree Award in 1995, the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery in 1995, and two Edgar Awards for Best Juvenile Mystery nominee for her Enola series.
Enola Holmes is the story of a fourteen year old girl in late 19th century England. She is the much younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, who both live in London and never visit. Since their father’s funeral a decade before, Enola has only known her mother and their two elderly servants.
Lady Eudoria Holmes is a Suffragist who does not need or want a man to run everything in her life, despite society’s views. Therefore, Enola was not raised as a proper young lady; she adopted her mother’s beliefs and radical thinking. She loves to draw, to run, to climb trees, and she has an unfortunate fondness for trousers. But when her mother disappears without a trace, Enola is left alone. Her only hope of finding her mother lies with her brothers.
Once Mycroft and Sherlock arrive, they tell her that their mum was more than a bit eccentric, and probably ran off on her own. Mycroft, the eldest, takes it upon himself to enroll Enola in a boarding school. There, she would be corseted and forced to be a lady, which would be the worst kind of torture for such a free spirit. A few weeks later, armed with a secret stash of bank notes left for her by her mother and disguised as a widow, Enola runs away to London. After all, that’s where her brothers live, and there would be no place better to hide and search for her mother than right under their noses.
On the way to London, she hears of a young marquess who appears to have been kidnapped and decides to try her hand at detective work. Enola’s arrival in London leads to her sudden kidnapping by the same thugs who captured the marquess. Her ingenuity and whalebone corset are their only chance for escape.
Once they have escaped and the child is delivered to Scotland Yard and Sherlock Holmes, Enola realizes that while her brother might be the World’s First and Only Private Consulting Detective, her calling is to become the World’s First and Only Scientific Perditorian, a finder of the lost. And one day, she knows, she’ll find her lost mum.
