Very few things sur­prise fif­teen-year-old Sher­lock Holmes but, when he takes his young lady friend out for her birth­day, even he can’t fig­ure out how a mediocre magi­cian like Alis­tair Hemsworth can make such a life-like drag­on appear on stage and then, just as quick­ly, make it dis­ap­pear into thin air. The young cou­ple goes back­stage to meet the magi­cian and they find him being arrest­ed for the mur­der of the most famous magi­cian in Lon­don. It appears that some­thing has eat­en the famous magi­cian in a secret lab appar­ent­ly belong­ing to Hemsworth. Sher­lock sets out to prove Hemsworth’s inno­cence and actu­al­ly accom­plish­es his goal. Once the magi­cian is released, how­ev­er, Holmes finds him­self ques­tion­ing whether the man he’d freed was, indeed, the mur­der­er. Shane Pea­cock has done his research well. His char­ac­ter makes a very believ­able younger ver­sion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes. Shane has also accu­rate­ly por­trayed Lon­don of the 1860’s. True to the style of the orig­i­nal mas­ter, this nov­el is filled with excel­lent deduc­tions by the young Holmes, numer­ous twists and turns and an excit­ing cli­max that kept me read­ing at the edge of my seat. The many Jew­ish ref­er­ences in this book main­ly refer to the fact that Sher­lock is a ​“half-Jew” and many of these ref­er­ences are not pos­i­tive, i.e. (Sher­lock) ​“Sir…I am part Jew­ish.” “(Oth­er) ​“and zat was dif­fi­cult for your, yes?” ​“Very.” Or (Oth­er) ​“A Jew’s rep­u­ta­tion is sul­lied enough in Eng­land by his mere exis­tence.” Even in this respect, the author is accu­rate in show­ing that being a Jew in Eng­land in the 1860’s was not easy. This book is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed for ages 10 and above.