★★★★☆ After a brief pause, we return to our regularly scheduled Enola!

Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche

Nancy Springer

OK, the pause was actually eleven years, which is brief compared to things that take much longer than eleven years...

Between 2006 and 2010 Nancy Springer published the first six Enola Holmes mysteries, which I have read and reviewed separately, and also summed up in my review of the omnibus collection here. In short -- they are tremendous fun, the perfect refreshment after reading something longer and more serious. The final novel in this series of six, The Case of the Disappearing Duchess, brought the series to a neat conclusion. We learned that Enola's mother had disappeared because she was ill, and that she had died sometime in the ensuing year. Furthermore, Enola was reconciled with her brothers Sherlock and Mycroft. And there the story rested for eleven real-world years.

In 2020 Netflix released an Enola Holmes movie (which I have seen) and in 2022 a second (which I have not). In 2021 Springer rebooted the book series with this novel. I am of course delighted at the resumption of the series, but was also apprehensive that it might have been changed to take after the movie, which is quite different from the books.

This apprehension was not unfounded, but I was pleased to find that Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche was still a lot of fun. It is based almost entirely on the earlier books and continues them in story, characters, and overall nature. The main changes are the ones that follow from the events of Disappearing Duchess -- Enola now has a relationship with her brothers, particularly Sherlock, and is no longer hunting for her mother. Also, there is one change for which I suspect we have the movie to thank. Viscount Tewksbury, Marquess of Basilwether, whom Enola calls "Tewky", to his annoyance, is only a minor character in the novels, despite having been the missing Marquess in the title of the first of them. In the movie, however, he was elevated to male lead, and there is even a hint of romance between him and Enola (though the action never goes beyond looking soulfully into each other's eyes). Tewky is back in Black Barouche, though -- thank the Lord -- only as a friend.

Black Barouche begins with a prolog by Sherlock in which he nicely summarizes the first six novels. It also ends with an epilog by Sherlock.

The story begins when Watson shows up on Enola's doorstep to tell her he is worried about Sherlock, who has fallen into melancholia -- the nineteenth century term for depression. (This, by the way, is true to Arthur Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories -- Sherlock was subject to occasional black moods.) Enola decides to annoy him out of his lethargy. She visits him at 221B Baker St, and while she is unsuccessfully annoying Sherlock (let me clarify -- she is entirely successful at annoying him, but not at getting him up off the couch), a lady shows up desiring to engage Sherlock's services to look into the untimely death of her sister. Sherlock is too depressed to be interested, but Enola volunteers her help. This, finally, gets Sherlock off the couch, and together he, Enola, Miss Glover (the lady whose sister was lost), Watson, and Tewky investigate.

It is every bit as fun as the first six Enola Holmes mysteries. There are currently (24-Oct-2023) two more Enola Holmes novels, published in 2022 and 2023, and I will certainly read them.

The book ends with a short story, Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons, which I have reviewed separately -- it's also fun. If you buy Black Barouche, you need not buy Boy in Buttons.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

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