Eye of the Crow
A
Boy Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Shane Peacock
Tundra Books (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-88776-850-4 (0887768504)
ISBN-13: 978-0-88776-850-7 (9780887768507)
Publication Date: September 2007
List Price: $19.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Sherlock Holmes, just thirteen, is a misfit. His
highborn mother is the daughter of an aristocratic family, his father a
poor Jew. Their marriage flouts tradition and makes them social pariahs
in the London of the 1860s; and their son, Sherlock, bears the burden
of their rebellion. Friendless, bullied at school, he belongs nowhere
and has only his wits to help him make his way.
But what wits they are! His keen powers of observation are already
apparent, though he is still a boy. He loves to amuse himself by
constructing histories from the smallest detail for everyone he meets.
Partly for fun, he focuses his attention on a sensational murder to see
if he can solve it. But his game turns deadly serious when he finds
himself the accused — and in London, they hang boys of
thirteen.
Review:
Worldwide, 1867 was a year of memorable events. It was the year, for
instance, when the U.S. purchased Alaska from the Russians and Canada
became a Dominion. It was the year the Fenians rose up in Ireland, and
the first ship navigated the Suez Canal. Charles Dickens gave the first
of his public readings in America in 1867, and Karl Marx published his
first volume of Das Kapital in Europe. John Galsworthy was born.
Charles Baudelaire died. And according to multiple award-winning
author, Shane Peacock, 1867 is the memorable year in his magnificent
novel, Eye of the Crow, when
his fictionalized 13-year-old Sherlock Holmes solves his first London
murder with only the cawing of crows and a blood splattered glass
eyeball initialled “L.E.” to guide him. Earlier this year,
Peacock’s book won the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award
for Best Juvenile crime novel. It’s a must-read story about the
teenage years of the British detective many believe to be the best ever
in the business.
For dedicated Sherlockians, even young ones, Peacock’s novel is a
fascinating depiction of Holmes’ coming of age with facts,
fiction and personas taken from the mythology surrounding the Baker
Street sleuth and cleverly and at times humorously woven into the
story. Knowledgeable readers will recognize the references to
Sherlock’s Sherrinford family roots, an older brother and a
deceased younger sister. They will appreciate his use of a magnifying
glass, his use of disguises and his retentive memory, his connection to
Irene, her father, Andrew (not Arthur) C. Doyle, and their dog, John
Stuart Mill, to the Irregulars, to the crippled newspaper vendor,
Dupin, and to Inspector Lestrade and his teen-aged son, “Lestrade
the second.” He’s about the same age as Sherlock, but
”the spitting image of Lestrade, except for the moustache.”
The icons and landmarks of London are embedded in the story too.
Sherlock cruises around Trafalgar Square, reads the Illustrated Police
News, sights Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Disraeli, "the
greatest politician in the land,” Anna Swann, "the Giantess with
her head high above the crowd,” and Blondin, "the amazing
high-rope star.” As well, “He`s seen the black-faced
chimney-sweeps, the deformed beggars, and the pickpockets of the
streets.” Holmes’ long time fans will be captivated by
Peacock’s use of these familiar details, and new readers will be
entranced by their introduction.
A first-rate thriller, Eye of the Crow,
bubbles with mystery and suspense and bursts wide open with a
gut-walloping surprise in the death of an individual Sherlock loves.
But before that fateful event besets him, he embarks on a quest to
expose the details of the knifing death of a young woman in a
Whitechapel back alley, witnessed as far as he knows by only a pack of
scavenging crows. Using his powers as “an observing
machine” and the trademark reasoning that later distinguishes his
adult career, he deciphers what the crows tell him in their unique way,
finds and discards clues about a wrongfully imprisoned Arabian
apprentice butcher, enlists the most unlikely of individuals to assist
him, eludes the police and would-be anti-Semitic assassins, and adopts
the most reasonable of disguises to allow him to gain entry to the
houses of the rich in the city’s Mayfair district where he
eventually discovers the final clue the crows were leading him to and
to the perpetrator who owns it. Told with a remarkable mix of the
styles of Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Shane Peacock, the novel
bulges with memorable images such as that of the “rake thin
little lad with ears like the handles on a teacup,” or that of
“a ghostly parade of grotesque creatures, frail as skeletons,
ragged as goats,” or that of Sydenham’s Crystal Palace
which the young Sherlock sees as “either the biggest glass
cathedral the world has ever known, or a greenhouse made for
giants.” Touted as Sherlock’s 1st case, Eye of the Crow has already spawned a second riveting one in Death in the Air.
Hopefully there are even more stories to come with the young man who
vows he “will spend every waking hour seeking justice, as
villainous in his search as any criminal.”
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Eye of the Crow.
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 Eye of the Crow ...
Location(s) referenced: London.