KIDS' BOOKS

Eye of the Crow: The Boy Sherlock Holmes: His First Case

by Shane Peacock

Age group: 10-14

When 13-year-old Sherlock Holmes meets the eyes of a young Arab butcher’s assistant arrested for supposedly committing a brutal murder in London’s East End, he’s drawn into a web of villainy while simultaneously setting out on his lifelong path to seek justice for those wrongly accused. But justice proves much more elusive than young Holmes expects, especially when he finds himself taken into custody as an accessory to the crime.

Making a daring escape, Holmes becomes a fugitive trying to prove his own and Mohammad Adalji’s innocence. Will he be able to solve the mystery of the Whitechapel murder before the killer strikes again? Using the keen powers of observation that he’s learned from his father, and aided by Malefactor (leader of a gang of streetwise young thieves) and a new friend, Irene Doyle, Holmes finds out who really committed the murder, but not before he inadvertently puts his friends and family in great danger.

In Eye of the Crow, Shane Peacock has created a cleverly inventive background story for Sherlock Holmes that explains the adult character’s reluctance to talk about his family life. He’s also managed to create a thrilling, impeccably paced murder mystery. Peacock reveals the budding detective’s very real fears and insecurities, providing just enough detail about the young Sherlock’s methods to make him an entirely believable teenage precursor to the master detective. Peacock also neatly creates a sense of the bustle of Victorian London, making the squalid grunginess of the East End almost waft off the pages.

Will Malefactor turn out to be Holmes’s arch-enemy Professor Moriarty? Will Irene Doyle become the irresistible Irene Adler? Hopefully Peacock will provide more clues in the next installment of this stunning new mystery series.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Canton (from the July 2007 issue)

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