10. Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess

By Nancy Springer

I had already watched the Netflix adaptation of Enola Holmes a couple of years ago with my daughter.  I enjoyed it, but I think she was a little too young to appreciate it.  I found this used paperback copy of The Case of the Missing Marquess at Chainon not long after and read it during my annual summer visit in Vancouver.  The book was just as enjoyable, though I can't remember much in the way of detal (I'm writing this review in 2024) except that it was a lot like the movie!

Anyway, I'm going to put this book in my daughter's bookshelf in case she ever wants to read it.  Leafing through my copy, I did note this one passage that I liked:

  Once upon a time—it seemed long ago, in another world, but it was really only six weeks ago—once, pedalling along a country road and thinking of my brother, I had made a mental list of my talents, comparing them unfavorably with his.

  Now, riding in a London cab instead of on a bicycle, I found myself compiling in my mind a different list of my talents and abilities. I knew things Sherlock Holmes failed even to imagine. Whereas he had overlooked the significance of my mother’s bustle (baggage) and her tall hat (in which I suspected she had carried quite a stout roll of bank notes), I, on the other hand, understood the structures and uses of ladies’ underpinnings and adornments. I had shown myself adept at disguise. I knew the encoded meanings of flowers. In fact, while Sherlock Holmes dismissed “the fair sex” as irrational and insignificant, I knew of matters his “logical” mind could never grasp. I knew an entire world of communications belonging to women, secret codes of hat brims and rebellion, handkerchiefs and subterfuge, feather fans and covert defiance, sealing-wax and messages in the positioning of a postage-stamp, calling cards and a cloak of ladylike conspiracy in which I could wrap myself. I expected that without much difficulty I could incorporate weaponry as well as defense and supplies into a corset. I could go places and accomplish things Sherlock Holmes could never understand or imagine, much less do.

  And I planned to.