Read it now, because next year you will prob­a­bly see it on Broad­way. In the dead of night, under the dense fog of Lon­don, a ter­ri­ble crime has occurred. A beau­ti­ful woman is stabbed and left to die in a pool of blood. No one has wit­nessed the crime, or have they? Mean­while, in a drea­ry Lon­don flat, a bril­liant, bit­ter, and decid­ed­ly odd teenag­er named Sher­lock Holmes dreams of a bet­ter life. His moth­er, a high­born lady, has been cast out of her fam­i­ly because she mar­ried a Jew, his bright, uni­ver­si­ty trained father, who is unable to attain his true poten­tial because of anti-Semi­tism in the Lon­don of 1867. The father toils at a low-pay­ing job, while his moth­er tutors voice in the homes of the wealthy. Young Holmes, as he vis­its the mur­der scene and spec­u­lates on the clus­ter­ing of crows above it, becomes a sus­pect. Dan­ger runs high and inter­est piques page by page until the mys­tery is final­ly solved. This is a page-turn­er par-excel­lence. Shane Pea­cock has cre­at­ed a boy who bears all the seeds of the future adult Homes. His clever char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the boy Holmes hints at the great detec­tive Holmes will become. As for Jew­ish inter­est — it is there in the dis­crim­i­na­tion issues, and (par­don me) in the depic­tion of Jew­ish seichel. Ages 10 – 14.