Eye of the Crow.

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.

Having observed that Sherlock Holmes’s family background and childhood are not described in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, Peacock sets out to provide this back story. He does so brilliantly while creating a sophisticated, reader-engaging murder mystery that is set in a richly described London, England, of April and May, 1867. Sherlock, 13, is Rose and Wilberforce’s middle child. Sherlock’s father, who once aspired to teach at a university, had that goal vanish when he, a Jew, eloped with the gentile daughter of a country squire who financially cut off his daughter while blocking Wilberforce’s advancement opportunities. Eschewing school, Sherlock hangs around Trafalgar Square, where he reads discarded issues of the Illustrated Police News. A headline regarding the stabbing murder of a young woman catches Sherlock’s attention, and when he later reads that the accused killer, Mohammad Adalji, an 18-year-old butcher’s apprentice, is “to be bound over,” Sherlock joins the crowd outside the Old Bailey Courthouse, where he encounters Mohammad, who claims, “I didn’t do it!”

Moved by Mohammad’s words, Sherlock twice visits the murder site, actions which lead to his arrest as Mohammad’s accomplice. With the murder weapon traced directly to Mohammad, Sherlock recognizes that Mohammad will be convicted at his trial in three weeks and hung immediately afterwards. Sherlock, his own survival at stake, escapes and races against the trial’s date to identify the real killer. A more demanding read than most juvenile crime novels, Eye of the Crow provides much social history along with the mystery, which increases in tension as Mohammad’s trial/execution day approaches. Highly recommended.