Books: Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer (2006)

"When their mother disappears, Enola's brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, decide to send her to a finishing school against her will. Instead, with the aid of her mother who had provided hidden funds and an elaborate cipher for her daughter to communicate with her, Enola runs away to London where she establishes a clandestine private detective career specializing in missing persons investigations. Furthermore, Enola must keep ahead of her brothers who are determined to capture and force her to conform to their expectations."

Despite my love of mysteries, I never was enthused with the Sherlock Holmes character, the novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or the numerous iterations that have come about over the century of the characters publication. I’ve seen only a few films and TV versions (though none of the more recent ones starring Robert Downey, Jr.) but I’ve mostly avoided them. I recently, however, watched the Enola Holmes, the Netflix film based on Nancy Springer’s YA title Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess. I enjoyed the film immensely, mostly because Stranger Thing’s star Millie Bobby Brown is so great in it. Actually the cast is pretty fabulous, with Sam Claflin, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonhman Carter, and newcomer Louis Partridge. The film, like the many books released long after the passing of Conan Doyle, is a pastiche to what came before, borrowing characters and settings from the established canon of Sherlock Holmes, but the Enola character is Springer's creation.

As typical with adaptations, the film’s plot is nearly the same, but liberties were taken. In the book, Enola’s search for her Mother, Eudoria Vernet Holmes, is the main thrust of the book, as is Enola’s journey to London. The social commentary on mores and morals of the era are in film and the book –though it’s more prominent in the film version- and Enola’s encounter with Vicount Tweksbury, Marquess of Basilwether takes up little of the subplot. Both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes have mere cameos in the book, so anyone who saw the film and then read the book will be disappointed at how small there roles are here.

Then again, there are five other volumes in this series, and the first book leaves the disappearance of their mother unresolved (the film version does have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I’m guessing they adapted other elements from the other books to make this film this way). So I will speculate that this arc will continue for at least one or two more books and it’s possible both Holmes brothers will have larger footprints in those later volumes. Still Enola is intelligent, very rational girl in the book and film and it would seem Millie Bobby Brown was born to play her. Springer also gives her character the resourceful skills and rational thought needed to navigate the era where women were like property, were seen in only one way, and never given the chance to be an individual.

A nice start.