Death in the Air.

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

It’s July 1, 1867, some six weeks after readers last encountered 13-year- old Sherlock Holmes in Eye of the Crow, and the young sleuth is on to his next case. Present at London’s Crystal Palace when Monsieur Mercure, a trapeze star, is seriously injured in a fall, Sherlock observes that Mercure’s trapeze bar had been tampered with. Concluding that someone had tried to kill Mercure, Sherlock immediately suspects the remaining three members of the highflying troupe. However, after learning that the Palace’s vault had been robbed of a large sum around the same time that Mercure fell, Sherlock connects the two events and then finds himself confronting London’s most notorious gang.

As in the first novel, Sherlock’s case solving is driven by an urgent deadline. Sigerson Bell, the aged apothecary to whom Sherlock is apprenticed, must raise his delinquent rent money within two weeks or he, along with Sherlock, will be evicted. Sherlock’s answer to their monetary problems resides in the reward he anticipates receiving by solving one or both crimes.

Death in the Air consists of two parts, with “The Mercure Incident” being the cerebral whodunit portion while “The Brixton Gang” provides the thriller component as Sherlock confronts the murdering thieves. Though this second installment works as a stand-alone read, readers familiar with the earlier book will better understand Sherlock’s connections to such major secondary characters as Malefactor, Irene Doyle, and Inspector Lestrade. The novel has a dark, Batman-esque ending as Sherlock pledges “to turn himself into a crime-fighting machine unlike any England has ever seen.” Highly recommended.