Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

James Keynes Moriarty is furious with his father for sending him off to high school at Baskerville Academy in Connecticut, which Moriarty men have attended since the academy’s founding in Britain long ago. His younger sister, Moria, sent to the Academy’s middle school, settles in quite well, but James, being the male Moriarty heir, finds himself in the crosshairs of jealous upperclassmen. Things only get worse for him when the headmaster announces the Moriarty Bible has been stolen from its display case, and everyone is on curfew until it is recovered. The very existence of the Bible is news to the Moriarty siblings, but the urgency of its recovery is underscored by a series of clues sent to James. He’s clever, but his roommate Sherlock Holmes is even cleverer, and as Moria bonds with Sherlock, she presses her brother to seek Sherlock’s help. James regards Sherlock’s proffered assistance as an insult, though, and he instead teams up with some academy goons to bumble through a mystery that only gets blacker and deadlier when his father’s “accidental” death seems to be entangled with James’ own initiation into a sinister society that binds Baskerville’s elite alumni over the generations. Pearson skillfully dodges the worn paths of the trending “young Sherlock” genre and launches a series that handles character development as adroitly as it weaves its devilish mystery plot. Whodunnit fans will be well pleased with the twists and turns in this debut, and Holmes fans who wonder what makes Moriarty tick will be racing back for volume two.