Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess (An Enola Holmes Mystery)

Great series! Enola is a heroine worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Interesting family dynamics’s. Well thought out plot! I recommend this to readers of all ages!

I first listened to the audiobooks of Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes series when my girls were very young. Now that they are older, I thought it would be a good time to introduce them to this delightful series.The Case of the Missing Marquess is the first book in the Enola Holmes series. As you may have guessed from the surname, Enola is Sherlock and Mycroft’s sister. At fourteen, she is much younger than her brothers, and in fact, has not seen them in over ten years. But when her mother disappears mysteriously, Enola summons them to the Holmes countryside estate. There are very few clues as to where Mrs. Holmes may have gone, and Sherlock and Mycroft determine that the best course of action is for Enola to enroll in a boarding school. She has been raised quite unconventionally, and does not know any of the social graces that she ought to know by the age of fourteen.Enola objects to this plan, so she runs away. She stumbles, quite unexpectedly into the disappearance of a young marquess. She proves to be quite astute at determining where a young aristocrat might bolt if he grew weary of his pampered life. Things look quite dicey for awhile, but Enola is a fighter, and is much more clever than her brothers could have possibly imagined.As is the case with many first books in a long series, it is necessary to convey a great deal of background information. This isn’t a problem per se; Enola is a delightful protagonist and she’s full of witty observations. But the downside is that the mystery portion is a bit abbreviated. Enola does have some brilliant deductions about why and where the young Marquess may have absconded, but she is aided by nothing short of Divine Providence.My girls enjoyed listening to this book as we drove around on various errands. They could empathize with Enola quite a bit, and they found her to be very funny and lively.I would absolutely recommend The Case of the Missing Marquess, as well as the rest of the Enola Holmes series. The books are rather short; only about 4-5 hours of listening time apiece. I do recommend the audiobook editions if possible; Katherine Kellgren brings the story to life with all sorts of accents for the various characters. I would recommend this book (and the rest of the series) for children in the later years of elementary school. There are children in peril and there are some minor mature content; the possibility of women being reduced to prostitution is mentioned, but without any elucidation as to what that entails. It is, however, an important part of the narrative; having grown up in the countryside, Enola is unaware of how poverty has affected some of the people in London. This discovery shapes her character, and she can later be seen performing charitable acts for the poor. My girls and I are looking forward to listening to the rest of the series in the coming weeks!

As a long-time fan of Nancy Springer's works, I was delighted when I stumbled upon the Enola Holmes series. Not only did it fit right in with my Sherlock-Holmes jonesing, but I fondly recalled Springer's habits of creating exciting female leads in a world otherwise run by the men-folk; something that is more than a little hard to find for the young lady bibliophile. There's nothing wrong with Sherlock, Jem, and Dante, of course...it's just nice to have someone a little easier to relate to in the estrogen department, every once in a while.In the Enola Holmes series, Madame Springer provides her usual intriguing story and enjoyable characters. The original character feels less shoe-horned into the borrowed canon world than some of her others have (Rowan Hood, for example, who was thoroughly enjoyable but made no real sense in regards to the original Robin Hood tales). Enola is witty, stubborn, and capable. All improvements on the typical 'distressed female' that come both from the Holmes era and a great deal of modern-day whinier 'heroines' that seem to be creeping into the business.Where the book fails is, ironically, the injections of thorough historical fact. The plot is broken up by almost random paragraphs explaining the laws of female accompaniment, what kind of boots that lady is wearing and why, whence this and that came about and how it matters...it was almost difficult in some places to resist the urge to skip forward several paragraphs until a character's name pops up, signaling the return to actual story. Given that this is a Holmes-inspired mystery, you might miss an important detail.Also problematic is the uncharacteristic role of Mycroft as the jerk older brother who wants to ship Enola off to a nasty school to take care of her while Mum is away. Granted, Enola needed the motivation to take off on her own, and given the Victorian rules (which we are reminded of repeatedly) it would have to be someone in her own family to give her the send off, and of course we wouldn't want Sherlock to be the elected misogynist, but it still comes off as a forced characterisation.Despite these flaws, the adventure Enola embarks on, and all those following, are fun at the very least, invigorating at the most generous. I cannot think of anyone I would strongly dissuade from reading. Perhaps this series could even be a lead-in to Enola's big brother's stories. Either way, it is worth a look.

That my granddaughter loved it.

My daughter loves this collection. This book was read in one day because it's so good.

Das Buch kam pünktlich an und es gefällt sehrLeider haben wir nicht darauf geachtet das es in englisch ist

Love the book

Perfekt vara och snabb leverans.