Death Cloud

"Death Cloud" by Andrew Lane is a surprisingly good . . . wait for it . . . mystery.
       Young Sherlock Holmes is taken out of his dreaded boarding school and forced to live with his even more dreaded aunt and uncle out in the countryside.  What awaits him, he believes, is endless hours of boredom and loneliness, punctuated only with conversation from relatives he hardly knows.  When he arrives, he finds what he expected, but with another layer:  A mysterious black cloud has been dropping down on citizens from Farnham, and leaving them with great red swollen welts.  Is this the beginning of another Bubonic Plague, or is it of a much greater design?  Stretching his wit and his mind, Sherlock delves into the heart of the mystery, determined to find the source of the black cloud before it claims any more prey.

I am not qualified to talk about how Young Sherlock Holmes matches up against his older counterpart, but I have to say that I am surprised to how Andrew Lane takes the smallest detail and turns it into a major part of the plot.  I mean, I could see the dead badger stunt coming a mile off, but I did enjoy the attention payed to detail.  It really makes the story.
       Actually, the attention to detail would have to make the story, because the plot was slightly ridiculous.  The first half of the plot was intriguing:  Why are these people getting killed by a black cloud?  What on earth is the black cloud?  Why did those people set that warehouse in fire?  And then, of course, there is the whimsy of imaging Sherlock and Matty meander the English countryside riding bicycles and the whatnot.  But then the plot takes a turn for the worse after Sherlock gets kidnapped for the first time.  That's right, the first time.  From there, it all descends into madness.
       For the characters, well, Sherlock is the only one you know.  It's third person narration, so you aren't really inside his head, but still, by the end of a, say, 250 page book you should think you would know a character reasonably well, right?  Well enough to predict their actions. That's not the case for this book, in my opinion. I feel like I hardly know Sherlock by the end of his adventures, his past is so shrouded in mystery, even though this book was supposed to clear up some of the mystery left by the first author of the adult Holmes series.  Even though Sherlock is a static character in this book--he overcomes no great personal revelations and has no life-changing epiphanies--you still don't feel like you understand what motivates him by the end of the book.  He wants to figure out a mystery?  Great!  Now, please tell me why he would risk his life to do so, and do tell me 'generic kindness' 'cause we all know that altruism is not that strong of a motivator.
       You can't really predict the actions of any of the characters.  With a good book you'll be able to get into the characters brains' and say, "Well, this person cares for this person, so they would do this.  But they don't care for that person that much, so they probably won't do that,"  or "This person values this, that, and the other, so, according to their values they are probably going to save this person."  You get few reasons with this book--Crowe says some reasons why he does stuff, and sometimes Matty does, but Sherlock is all like "This is logical.  This is what I'm going to do."  Well, it may be logical, but it's not smart.
        It may be my natural aversion to mysteries, but this book only comes up on my list as half decent.  If the train of events made more sense in my mind, I would like it more. Simple as that.  It is a good book, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't rank up there with my favorites, no way, no how.  Maybe I'll read the sequel if and/or when it comes out, maybe I won't.
         What I would like to say to young Mr. Holmes, though, when he decides that maybe carrying around this possibly poisonous yellow powder wasn't such a good after all is "no duh, Sherlock," because, in reality, maybe this whole venture wasn't such a good idea after all.