Book Review: Enola Holmes And The Mark Of The Mongoose by Nancy Springer
By Doreen Sheridan
October 24, 2023
Victorian England is a time of social upheaval as well as glorious technological and cultural progress. Enola Holmes, our young sleuth (or perditorian, as she prefers,) is discreetly practicing her trade while pursuing an education at the Women’s Academy. Perhaps more importantly for her peace of mind, she has finally reconciled with her overbearing older brothers Mycroft and Sherlock.
She’s thus had plenty of experience dealing with difficult men when another such bursts into her office one day, demanding help. The man doesn’t give his name, instead thrusting a photograph of his missing friend in Enola’s face and demanding that Dr Leslie Ragostin, her male boss, find the man in the picture. As Dr Ragostin is merely a name Enola made up to place on the door, she’s more than ready to assist, but the man – whom she’ll later discover goes by Ruddy – refuses to even look at her. In a fit of violent misogyny, he insults her and abuses her young porter Joddy. Infuriated, Enola kicks him out, then vows to find the missing friend before Ruddy can.
She soon figures out that the friend in question is Wolcott Balestier, an American businessman who recently came over to London with his sister Carrie. In an attempt to learn more about the missing Wolcott, Enola goes undercover, using the Holmes family’s trademark fondness for disguise to get work as a day maid in the Ballestier household:
I had dirtied my face and donned nostril inserts to broaden my proboscis, stained my teeth brown, and knuckled my eyes to bruise them just a little bit and make them tearful. I had purposely neglected to braid my hair the night before, so that as I slept it would become tangled, and I wore it hanging loose and unkempt. In addition, I had rendered every part of my personage grimy and ragged, with old brogues splitting wide open on my otherwise bare feet. Indeed, as I exited the Charing Cross Underground station and made my way to Maiden Lane, I feared–judging from the way other people shied away from me–that I might have taken my disguise a bit to far, might have overshot “poor thing” and, instead, achieved “a dreadful fright”!
That’s only the first of many disguises she successfully dons, as she chases leads in both the highest and lowest of London society. She swiftly ascertains that Wolcott had gone out one evening to admire the electric lights of the Savoy hotel and had promptly fallen off the face of the planet. He had no reason to disappear, so foul play must have befallen him.
Complicating matters is the fact that a grieving Carrie has seen fit to hire Sherlock himself to bring Wolcott home. While Sherlock isn’t totally against Enola engaging in detective work, he does have a bad habit of trying to tell her what to do. Enola understands the need for collaboration but is understandably unwilling to give up her independence once more, so has to juggle their common desire to find Wolcott with her need to investigate freely. Will she come to regret this, though, when she finds herself alone and outnumbered by murderous goons?
This was another lively, entertaining installment of Enola Holmes’ namesake series, as she mingles with important historical figures while navigating the tumult of turn of the century England. I love how Nancy Springer consistently looks beyond the great men of the era to highlight the thoughts and feelings of those who not only had to interact with them but too often stood in their shadows. Carrie Balestier is one such person, lovingly brought to the foreground here in all her contradictory glory, as she discusses Ruddy with her brother:
“What makes him so outstanding?” asked Carrie, speaking quite lightly so as to conceal her own deep feelings. She had met the man a few times, but once would have been enough. A vital, muscular man, he was so much the opposite of her gentle, slender brother that the two of them formed a most unlikely alliance, and Carrie marveled to think of Wolcott’s friend: his blunt, magnetic intensity, his brilliant talk about his many adventures, his enthusiasms and sometimes his despairs–it was rumored that he had suffered a nervous breakdown not long ago! His tempers–this was a man who truly needed a strong woman to do for him! She had already made up her mind to marry him.
Ms. Springer continues to bring the good, bad and ugly of the Victorian era to life through the canny gaze of our resourceful and endearing heroine. Each book in the series offers a fresh perspective on subjects that might easily be lost to time as dry historical fact but for her engaging writing, wrapped around genuinely intriguing mysteries appropriate for audiences young and old.