School Library Journal

Gr 5-9-Fourteen-year-old Enola Holmes is intelligent, sassy, and a woman before her time, living incognito in Victorian London and working as a Perditorian. She is on the run from her famous older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, who feel she belongs in a boarding school learning to be a lady. Using various aliases, disguises, and ciphers, Enola is on the case to find the missing teenage daughter of Sir Eustance Austair while trying to elude "capture" by her siblings. She finds herself in the back alleys of London, using her wits to locate the missing Lady Cecily while also trying to keep herself out of mortal peril. Though readers' interest will be piqued by the references to Enola's first adventure, The Case of the Missing Marquess (Philomel, 2006), this title stands alone. Fans of Blue Balliet's Chasing Vermeer (2004) and The Wright 3 (2006, both Scholastic) and Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game (Dutton, 1978) will surely enjoy the suspense and the fresh voice of this young sleuth.-Angela M. Boccuzzi-Reichert, Merton Williams Middle School, Hilton, NY Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

ALA Booklist (Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2007)

In The Case of the Missing Marquess (2006), Springer introduced 14-year-old Enola Holmes, Sherlock's younger sister. In this book, Enola starts her own detective agency in London, complete with costumes and circumventions to hide her age. When a young lady of privilege goes missing, Enola uses several of her personas to find the girl. The mystery, laced with buzzwords of the time, won't have much resonance for contemporary kids, but Enola is beautifully drawn, as are the sights and sounds of late-nineteenth-century London. A surprise reunion for Enola will touch readers.

Horn Book (Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2007)

In this strong follow-up to The Case of the Missing Marquess, fourteen-year-old Enola Holmes takes on a case that big brother Sherlock won't deign to touch: Lady Cecily's scandalous disappearance with an unsavory suitor. Enola's spunk (she refuses to become "a singing, dancing, French-quoting, delicately fainting decoration") and smarts (she unmasks a Jekyll-and-Hyde-type villain) are sure to resonate with readers.