Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud [Kindle Edition]

Old-school Sherlockians may not entirely recognize this boy as their beloved, neurotic, purely cerebral consulting detective, but younger readers weaned on Alex Rider and Young James Bond will certainly love Andrew Lane's Young Sherlock Holmes and embrace him as a new addition to the growing pantheon of YA action heroes. While Lane's Sherlock may engage more in fistacuffs than deductive thought, Lane, a Sherlockian himself, does not commit any colossal crimes again the canon, as did Steve Spielberg with his 1985 Young Sherlock Holmes film where we see a junior Watson inserted into the timeline well before his established first appear in A Study in Scarlet. And this is what makes Lane's first book so successful, IMO. He creates a fast-paced action adventure as thrilling as any other YA novel, while keeping the story rooted in Sherlockian reality of proper period and tone (no supernatural happens or vampires here). He also sprinkles the book with many canonical references and clues. The action is good. The villain diabolical. The writing crisp, descriptive, and breezy. All in all, I think this is fantastic start for what I hope will be a long running series. I'm onboard all the way!

Sherlock Holmes is getting younger every year. The Robert Downey Jr. movieSherlock Holmes, the modern BBC/PBS series Sherlock: Season One [Blu-ray] and several graphic novel retellings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and now two series 'recording' the youth of the world's most famous detective: this on and Shane Peacock's.Eye of the Crow: The Boy Sherlock Holmes, His 1st Case

This story starts off well. The writing is brisk, the plot is scarily interesting, with more than enough page turning action scenes. Holmes' inner fears and outer sang froid are written well. Young Sherlock sounds and act like a kid of fourteen - a very smart kid with his wits about him at all times. So does young Matthew, his new friend and sidekick.

The latter part, when the master villain is revealed strained my credulity too much. It's fantastical. Fans of the Downey movie would appreciate it. (I enjoyed the movie. It was a real roller-coaster ride. But it was hardly the Holmes I'm used to.)

The 'puppy-love' interest was too 'Disney', but the boys were otherwise realistic.

Holmes' tutor is a cross between the adult Holmes (a role model for Sherlock?) and Indiana Jones. Also something like the monk on the Kung-Fu show.

Mycroft is given too much power for a young man of 21, starting out in the civil service. And a gentleman's son would have ridden at least a pony long before he was 14. He might have been a poor rider, but he would have learned the rudiments of horse riding.

An original murder weapon.

A fine boy's adventure novel. Worth the read and worth a series.

Canny writers/publishers/producers have been cottoning on to the notion that there's money to be made in mining the adolescent and teen years of male heroes -- witness The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones or the Young Bond series. And since Sherlock Holmes is in all likelihood the most pastiched fictional character in history, it came as little surprise to come across this first in what will likely be a lengthy series of "Young Sherlock Holmes" books. Although I do enjoy the Sherlock Holmes canon, I am far from being a true Sherlockian and am perfectly happy to dip into the occasional Holmes pastiche for some light reading. This book, which seems to be aimed at adolescent readers, is rather lighter than most.

In it, we met 14-year-old Sherlock as his elder brother Mycroft packs him off to the countryside to live with some distant relations during the school holidays. It seems that their father is away with the army in India, and their mother is bedridden with some kind of mysterious nervous breakdown. Once at his relatives, he left mostly to his own devices, and before too long, he's fallen in with a kind of homeless boy of his own age, who introduces him to "real" life. Meanwhile, a colorful American tutor is engaged for Sherlock's education -- an education mainly in learning how to think and observe. Soon enough, a body is discovered, suspicious behavior is observed, and young Sherlock is knee-deep in his first intrigue.

While it's all fairly fun there isn't much sense of the adult Sherlock in this portrayal of teen Sherlock. He's a pretty blank slate without much character at all, more a plucky kid action hero than anything else. There's a great deal of action, much more so than deductive reasoning, and it's hard to tell whether that's a case of the writer playing to his presumed audience of adolescent boys, or simply being unable to come up with anything that clever. There are plenty of insider references to keep the Sherlock buffs happy, but the essential character of the young detective seemed completely absent. The period feel is generally quite good, and full of interesting details, but the dialogue occasionally drifts into phrases or words that feel wrong for the era. There's also a cheesy romantic interest in the form of his American tutor's tomboyish daughter. Overall, probably not worth it for adult readers, but not a bad way to try and get kids interested in the original stories.