Enola Holmes: Not Elementary My Dear Sherlock!

Posted by Speakeasy News > Wednesday 23 September 2020 > What's On


In the Netflix adaptation of the Young Adult mystery-adventure by Nancy Springer, Millie Bobby Brown is playing Enola Holmes, the sister of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes!

Over 130 years after the world’s most famous detective made his 1887 debut in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, comes a new mystery-adventure about another brilliant member of the Holmes family.

Starring Millie Bobby Brown  (Stranger Things, Godzilla: King of Monsters) and based on the book series by Nancy Springer, Enola Holmes introduces the world to Sherlock’s bright, resourceful, spirited younger sister.

Set in England in 1884, Enola Holmes follows our heroine as she embarks on what is essentially her first case.

Raised and educated by her free-thinking and eccentric mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), in the countryside, Enola lives a happy and unconventional life. While most girls of her age are learning embroidery and other skills befitting a “proper” young lady, Enola’s education consists of science, cryptology, and martial arts.

Mother has Disappeared!
But on the morning of her 16th birthday, Enola wakes to find that her mother has disappeared, leaving behind an odd assortment of gifts but no apparent clue as to where she’s gone or why.

After a free-spirited childhood, Enola suddenly finds herself under the care of her brothers, both set on sending her away to a finishing school for “proper” young ladies. Enola was born when Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin) Holmes were nearly grown. Their father died and the brothers moved off around the same time, leaving Enola with their mother.

Enola Needs No Husband
But Enola needs no husband, not even friends — "I have my own company," she declares. Refusing to follow their wishes, she leaves the shelter of home behind and wadeS into the inhospitable waters of the real world in search of her mother in London.  The journey finds her entangled in a mystery surrounding a young runaway Lord (Louis Partridge).

In this Netflix film, we follow a young a woman, as  sharp as her brothers, come into her power without the myriad advantages that their gender affords them. In the process, she also outwits her famous brother in solving a case that changes the course of history!

About the Enola Holmes Mystery Series
When American author Nancy Springer wrote her novels placing a teenage girl at the centre of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, she knew she was upending a centuries-old narrative of masculine protagonists throughout history.

Springer grew up on the Conan Doyle canon, but dismayed by what she perceived was a misogynistic view toward women in the stories, decided to create a female foil to the famous detective in the form of a late-born teenage sister, Enola. She created a series of six mysteries which were translated into several languages, became a graphic novel in both France and the US, and was nominated twice for the Edgar Awards for Best Juvenile Mystery. “My habit has been to introduce female fictional characters into what were formerly predominantly male tales,” Springer says. “So I chose to give Sherlock Holmes a much younger sister. It delighted me to create a worthy female counterpart who has all the sass, the mental acuity, the deductive ability and the instinct to beat him at his own game,” she says.

 

 

English version

The Case of the Missing Marquess

published by Penguin Random House

 

French version

La double disparition - Enola Holmes

published by éditions Nathan.