THE CASE OF THE LEFT-HANDED LADY:
An Enola Holmes Mystery
by Nancy Springer
Puffin Books
Hardcover: 0399245170
Paperback: 9780142411902
Ages 9-up
256 pages

Enola Holmes is back in Victorian London with disguises, discoveries, deceptions and dastardly deeds --- enough to baffle even her famous brother, Sherlock Holmes. Enola is still alone (her name spelled backwards, as you'll recall) and has set up her own business, posing as Dr. Leslie T. Ragostin, Scientific Perditorian. Or, in plain (not Victorian) English, a tracer of lost persons and things.

Her first client is none other than her brother's best friend, Dr. Watson. He wants the good "Doctor" to find Holmes's missing sister --- Enola herself. You see, Sherlock and his brother, Mycroft, want Enola to attend a ladies finishing school and become a perfect little London Lady. But not for this independent, free-spirited girl/woman! In this wild adventure, she has to elude Sherlock, who is frantically looking for her, while trying to find a missing young Lady who has disappeared into the dark, dirty and dangerous streets of London.

As she's searching for the missing Lady Cecily, Enola learns about Karl Marx and who the "Proletariat" is. She discovers that being left-handed is an anathema to aristocratic Victorians and that (in those days) changing a lefty to a righty could result in a split personality. Enola also uncovers a villain who is a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde type and an evil mesmerist who hypnotizes his victim.

Using her many disguises, Enola is the mute Sister of the Streets, wearing a black, heavily veiled habit, and in the dark of night helping to feed and clothe the poor. By day she is Dr. Ragostin's able secretary. Wearing Victorian silks and satins, she is a London Lady calling on the missing girl's haughty mother in her stately mansion.

But for all her derring-do, Enola is alone and misses her mother, another free spirit who is now living with Gypsies. They contact each other using a code based on flowers that they place in the "agony" columns of the London newspapers. (You'll find the code quite clever!)

Will all turn out well in the end? Will Enola find Lady Cecily and see her brother Sherlock? Pick up a copy of THE CASE OF THE LEFT-HANDED LADY to find out the answers to these and many more elementary questions!

   --- Reviewed by Robert Oksner

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