Death in the Air
A
Boy Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Shane Peacock
Tundra Books (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-88776-851-2 (0887768512)
ISBN-13: 978-0-88776-851-4 (9780887768514)
Publication Date: April 2008
List Price: $19.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): After the harrowing experience of losing his mother
while solving a brutal murder in London’s East End, young
Sherlock Holmes commits himself to fighting crime … and is
soon
involved in another case.
While visiting his father at the magnificent Crystal Palace, Sherlock
stops to watch a remarkable and dangerous trapeze performance high
above, framed by the stunning glass ceiling of the legendary building.
Suddenly, the troupe’s star is dropping, screaming and
flailing,
toward the floor. He lands with a sickening thud just a few feet away,
and rolls up almost onto the boy’s boots. Unconscious and
bleeding profusely, his body is grotesquely twisted. In the mayhem that
follows, Sherlock notices something that no one else sees —
something is amiss with the trapeze bar! He knows that foul play is
afoot. What he doesn’t know is that his discovery will put
him on
a frightening, twisted trail that leads to an entire gang of notorious
criminals..
Review:
As Canadian author Shane Peacock’s delightful novel Death in the Air
illustrates, it’s never too soon to be introduced to the
British
detective many believe to be the greatest sleuth of all time. Aimed at
young adults, this second book in Peacock’s The Boy Sherlock
Holmes Series is as entertaining and stimulating for adults and
afficianados as it is for teenagers and first-time readers seeking to
learn what Holmes might have been like as a street-wise
thirteen-year-old half-Jewish lad living, growing up and sleuthing in
London in 1867.
Although a mere teenager Holmes has already solved his first case in
Peacock’s Eye
of the Crow,
but at tremendous personal cost in the death of his mother as
retribution for his search for justice in the killing of a young woman.
Still battered by his loss he is attempting to make amends with his
estranged father, a worker at London’s famed Crystal Palace,
when
he is ensnared in his second case. It happens when Monsieur Mercure,
the famed aerialist nicknamed Le Coq, plunges from his broken trapeze
to fall at the astonished lad’s feet, muttering an ambiguous
“Silence ... me ...,” before being rushed
unconscious to
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Using his rapidly developing
trademark powers of observation and deductive reasoning Holmes begins
assessing the clues and surveying the possible suspects for what he
quickly concludes is an attempted murder. As he ponders the problem he
crosses paths with the other members of Mercure’s troupe, The
Swallow, The Robin, and The Eagle. He refers to famous aerialists
Leotard, Blondin and the Flying Farinis and dressed as a reporter he
meets with the Great Farini and his protégé El
Nino at
the Royal Alhambra Palace. It is another example of how Holmes
frequently uses disguises in his quest for justice. And as a sample of
his physical derring-do he accidentally takes a turn for the worst on
the flying trapeze when he flies through the air “with the
least
of ease.”
All around him as he searches for the perpetrators of the Mercure
incident and a robbery that has come to light, Victorian London comes
alive. There are cleverly inserted references to the authors of the
day, Charles Dickens and Jules Verne for two, to Thomas
Crapper’s
newly invented flush toilet, to London’s newspapers, The
Tely,
Gazette, and Times, to the Peelers or Bobbies as the police are known,
to the steam locomotive trains huffing into and out of Charring Cross
Station. Other landmarks are included too such as Covent Garden,
Trafalgar Square, Scotland Yard, the Elephant and Castle, Dulwich
Village and “its renowned college,” the Thames
Tunnel,
“the world’s first underwater tunnel,”
and the
dilapidated warehouses of Rotherhithe. It is there the infamous Brixton
Gang have secreted themselves before Holmes brings them to justice for
the robbery related to Le Coq’s mishap and reveals the
relevance
of the injured aerialist’s muttered message. The
gang’s
capture is as spectacular, exciting and dangerous an adventure as any
the senior Holmes encounters later on.
Although Dr. Watson hasn’t yet entered Holmes life in
Peacock’s books, others from the Sherlockian canon have, such
as
Dr. Bell, an alchemist with whom he now lives and Inspector Lestrade
with whom he frequently crosses swords. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, the
creator of the Sherlock Holmes adult crime series, is referred to while
an imaginary daughter, Irene Doyle, plays a major role as the love
interest in a romantic triangle with Holmes and Malefactor, the London
Irregulars’ street boss, crime Lord and Sherlock’s
nemesis.
And as the youthful Holmes hones his detective skills that play so
prominently in the adult novels, Peacock also lays the groundwork for
the master detective’s mature personality traits and his
emotional and psychological behaviours that have fuelled so many books
and even scholarly treatises. As well Peacock resurrects the symbolism
of the crows that was so well done in young Sherlock’s first
case. And he foreshadows the troubles of future sequels when he has the
conflicted Sherlock conclude about friends and foes alike that
“He will outsmart them all. He will continue his plan to turn
himself into a crime-fighting machine unlike any England has ever
seen.” “Evidently, Mr. Peacock.
Evidently.”
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Death in the Air.
Review
Copyright © 2008 — M. Wayne Cunningham
— All
Rights Reserved
Reprinted with Permission
Mysteries in this series ...
Eye
of the Crow
Tundra Books (Hardcover), September 2007
ISBN-10: 0-88776-850-4 (0887768504)
ISBN-13: 978-0-88776-850-7 (9780887768507)
Death in the Air
Tundra Books (Hardcover), April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-88776-851-2 (0887768512)
ISBN-13: 978-0-88776-851-4 (9780887768514)
Omnimystery keywords for Death in the Air ...
Location(s) referenced: London.