The Case That Time Forgot by Tracy Barrett
Series: The Sherlock Files #3
Genre: Middle Grade, mystery, Sherlockian fiction
Published on April 27, 2010
Published by Henry Holt and Co.
Pages: 160
Read From: 11.19.11 - 11.22.11
SYNOPSIS
Xander's classmate Karim tells him about a famous amulet carved in the shape of Thoth, the Egyptian god of time. It as thought to be so powerful that it could turn back time one day every hundred years.
The amulet disappeared from a London museum years ago. Xena and Xander's celebrated ancestor Sherlock Holmes tried to find it, but had no luck. The twins are on the case - and so are mysterious foes who are trying to thwart and perhaps even harm them! Can Xander and Xena track down what Sherlock Holmes could not?
Review
Once more, Readers get a chance to follow the descendents of Sherlock Holmes on yet another case which outsmarted the world's greatest detective. This time, Xander and Xena meet with far more complications than they ever did in the previous two cases, as important clues are stolen from right under their noses, and someone keeps sending them threatening phone calls and even scorpions! And they even have a real live client this time. Sounds exciting, right? Well, the interest level is about the same as in the previous two books - fun clues that are easy to puzzle out for the Reader, but difficult for the hero and heroine, races around London, and entertaining references to Holmes that any Sherlockian will find amusing - even if mildly.
And like the other two cases, this one lacks a villain. At first, there are hints that there might be one, and I was excited about that. Every mystery needs a villain! And while not all of Holmes's cases had one, the majority of them did. And there's the difference between his cases and Xena and Xander's: there haven't been any in the three I've read so far. That's a problem. Tracy Barrett has managed to keep the series entertaining by her fun clues she's engineered and the fact that the twins are Holmes's relations, but unless she brings in a real villain - someone who actually means them harm - I fear that The Sherlock Files will become a rather large disappointment.
Others in The Sherlock Files:
1)The 100-Year-Old Secret
2)The Beast of Blackslope
3)The Case That Time Forgot
4)The Missing Heir
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