Becoming Holmes

It is the summer of 1870 in London, and death seems to be everywhere; at least it feels that way to Sherlock Holmes. Almost seventeen now, he cannot shake the blackness that has descended upon him: he has lost his dear father; his mentor, Sigerson Bell, is growing gravely ill; Irene Doyle, the object of his affections, has left for America; his longtime admirer, Beatrice Leckie, has chosen another suitor; and the death of the great Charles Dickens fills the city with an impending sense of doom. And out there somewhere in that darkness, Sherlock's great enemy, the villainous Malefactor, is spinning his web of evil, planning who knows what. Only one thing can rouse the young detective from the…