Book Review - Nancy Springer's The Case of the Gypsy Good-Bye
The Case of the Gypsy Good-Bye by Nancy Springer
Published by: Philomel Books
Publication Date: May 4th, 2010
Format: Kindle, 177 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
Enola has another disappearance to solve, that of Lady Blanchefleur del Campo. She is the wife of a wealthy foreign nobleman, Duque Luis Orlando del Campo. The beloved Duquessa was with her ladies-in-waiting, ironically right near 221B Baker Street, when she disappeared into thin air. There was a woman who approached her at the entrance to the Baker Street Underground stop, but what happened next no one knows. Did the woman lure the lady down onto the busy platform? Was she dragged along the tracks to be dealt with? She had no reason to run away but then why is there no ransom? Enola is approached in her disguise as Miss Ivy Mshle, now Mrs. John Jacobson, Dr. Ragostin's assistant, she gave herself a promotion. The husband says he is desperate and would have called on the great Sherlock Holmes but he is out of town. Curious on so many levels Enola goes to meet the ladies-in-waiting and see the life the Lady Blanchefleur del Campo was living. If there is such a thing as a slave to fashion, the missing Duquessa is the embodiment of that phrase. She has spent her entire life in a constricting spooned corset, even sleeping in it. She has had several confinements but has always lost the children, not a surprise to Enola as the poor woman has the same measurements she did as when she was a child. But Enola has a theory.... The ladies-in-waiting lovingly describe their mistress's clothes when she disappeared and Enola wonders, what if she was taken not for who she was but how she looked and what she was wearing? As Enola herself knows from her first day in London, there are unscrupulous people who will do anything to earn a little money. She quickly flees to check out her hunch which is easy enough to prove, and also to avoid her brother who has arrived on the scene, but what won't be as easy is what Sherlock has in store for her. The problem with installing her ex-landlady, Mrs. Tupper, with Florence Nightingale is that now Sherlock has a place he knows she will return to. But just cutting out Mrs. Tupper wouldn't be right so Enola will have to risk being found out. Which happens in short order, not because Sherlock recognized Enola, but because her faithful pooch did. That's where he was when the Duque searched for him, down at Ferndell getting an accomplice to out Enola! But at least Sherlock views his sister in a different light after all her adventures. He's not going to throw her to the wolves, or as the case here would be, to Mycroft. No, instead he will ask her for her help with something that their mother sent him and in return they will search for the Duquessa together. And she guesses Mycroft can come along for the ride. Maybe they will reach an entente?
The "problem" with this book is the title, The Case of the Gypsy Good-Bye. Oddly enough someone, somewhere, seems to have realized this and in the short story Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons which was released as a teaser for the first Enola Holmes book in over a decade it is referred to as The Case of the Disappearing Duchess. Some time later down the internet rabbit hole and it appears that perhaps this was done on British and Australian reissues when the Netflix movie came out. Be that as it may, someone at least realized the title of this book is just one big spoiler. Not that this really takes anything away from the book, it's just that you read the title and you think, oh, her mom's dead. Which is indeed the case. Which is also a good end to the series, or as it now stands, an end to the first arc of the series. Because Enola might have lost her mother but by opening up she realizes that she does have two brothers and if they could just really see her perhaps she doesn't have to spend her whole life alone like her name prophesied. And for me, the way the siblings come together through an interesting case and a long night shows that Enola can be accepted for who she is. What's more, I loved that Mycroft's every assumption was so far off base that he had more than a little egg on his face. While tying up the Holmes family drama Nancy Springer continues to handle topics of women's rights and what is done to them in the name of societal expectations. Lady Blanchefleur del Campo has suffered so severely at the hands of fashion that she literally cannot bear her own weight because her spine is too weak from a waist training corset. What I find interesting is that more recently there has been a push to say that corsets aren't the evil we once viewed them. That only those rare few cinched them tight enough to cause damage to internal organs leading to health issues such as the inability to bear children and constantly fainting. I have worn a corset and I didn't have any deleterious effects. But I wore one for only a few days and reading this book I thought back to one of my friends who in grade school had a scoliosis brace. To have to wear something everyday would be hard, but to do so AND try to use it to "improve" your figure? I don't think any right minded person would ever come to the conclusion that corsets are a good thing. But then again, people have always been choosing fashion over health.... Perhaps that's why there are those trying to rewrite the true history of corsets?
The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer
