Review:

This is a quarterly magazine from Melbourne, Australia aimed at children aged 9 to 12. Nicholas is a 10 year old computer whiz, no good at sport, has his hair cut every 23 days, and wants to become a private detective like his hero, Sherlock Holmes. Nicholas was turned onto Holmes by his Aunt Poppy, who loved watching old black and white movies on TV. Nicholas didn’t like any of the movies until one day they watched “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and he was hooked. The walls of his bedroom are decorated with Sherlock Holmes movie posters, he collects books, t-shirts, pages from websites, and coffee cups. He has an “old curly pipe” and a deerstalker. (Does this sound familiar?) Nicholas solves mysteries and when confronted with a problem or a tight spot he thinks to himself: “What would Mr Holmes do in a situation like this?” In Book 1 (June 2002), the first adventure is “The Cat Burglar”, where Nicholas has a run-in with a girl a few years older than himself named Felicity, but by the second story, “Fifi and the Angels”, he and Felicity are partners and calling each other “Holmes” and “Watson”. Nicholas is teaching the elderly couple living next door, Mr and Mrs Basket, how to use their computer and it’s they who come up with the idea of starting a detective agency to investigate neighbourhood mysteries.

Book 2 (December 2002) has Nicholas and Felicity involved in two more adventures. There is a bit of uncertainty between the duo as to who is the “senior” detective - Nicholas was there first but Felicity is older. This is resolved when Nicholas shows Felicity his bedroom, which is decorated in the style of the sitting room at 221B Baker Street, except that Nicholas has a computer and camera equipment rather than Mr Holmes’s desk for chemistry experiments. Felicity realises that he is not just another geeky boy but is knowledgable and level-headed, and is happy to play the Watson to his Holmes. Together they make a formidable team of detectives (but only after school work is finished). “The Garden Gnome Mystery” has Nicholas and Felicity investigating the disappearance of several gnomes from a lady’s garden. Nicholas finds clues there that start them off investigating who might be responsible. Felicity gets sidetracked helping the family of one of her school friends recover money owed to them by an unscrupulous clothing manufacturer. Parallels to “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” are neatly interwoven into the story which is brought to a conclusion when Sergeant Lesley (Les) Trade arrests the villain. In “The Goldfields Ghost Adventure”, Nicholas and Mr Basket are off on a weekend excursion to an old goldmining town in Victoria’s Gippsland area. Nicholas awakes in the night and sees furtive figures carrying a large box down the road. Next day they hear a story about ghostly goings-on during the night and the owners of the affected house are so scared that they are ready to pack up and leave. Nicholas proves the ghost to be a fake but doesn’t have any hand in discovering why, so this part of the story sort of fizzles out. On the other hand, Nicholas has seen something else which twigs his memory so using his mobile phone to send a text message he gets Felicity to look up his scrapbooks back home and this leads to the capture of an escaped prisoner who was hiding in the town.

Each issue of the magazine has word puzzles for readers to solve and a “Sherlockian Snippets” section contains information about Conan Doyle and the popularity of Sherlock Holmes which, refreshingly, is correct and interesting. According to the author, one of the aims of the magazine is to get young readers interested in the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Recommended.

Reviewed by:Bill Barnes, 2002