SHERLOCK Holmes is back and this time his client is none other than the British government; with his elder brother Mycroft Holmes being the front man. Interesting, isn’t it? Wait till you go through Knife Edge, the sixth Young Sherlock Holmes adventure because it features a psychic, séances and murders in a remote castle on the Irish coast.

What sets apart this adventure from its predecessors is that it tackles Sherlock Holmes’s development into a young detective rather than a young man. Virginia Crowe also returns in this book but it is her father and Sherlock’s mentor, Amyus Crowe, whose arrival paces things up. The adventure begins with Sherlock returning home and finding his brother Mycroft to welcome him. It turns out that Mycroft wanted to engage Sherlock’s services in judging a self-proclaimed psychic who claimed to communicate with the dead and was offering his services to the highest bidder.

And then there was the case of the Dark Beast who terrorised all in the coast of Galway; but even the terrorising creature was no match for the greatest detective in the making… or was it? Writer Andrew Lane excels in presenting the deductive reasoning which later on became the hallmark of Sherlock Holmes. The return of Matty and Rufus Stone also paces up things and if you are an ardent fan of the Young Sherlock Holmes series as this scribe, you will cheer on reading of their entry!

Knife Edge may not be the best book in the Young Sherlock Holmes series but it is one of the more fascinating ones. The writer is the winner here because his reimagining of Sherlock Holmes’ adolescence is not only helping the fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but also getting him a fan following that shows no sign of slowing down.