Barnaby Grimes: Curse of the Night Wolf
Grade 5–8—Barnaby Grimes is a tick-tock lad-an all-purpose messenger whose "highstacking" route carries him rapidly over the city's rooftops. He is suspicious when retired coachman Old Benjamin tells him about a miraculous cure offered free by Doctor Cadwallader. Then Benjamin vanishes mysteriously, and that same full-moon night, Barnaby is attacked by a vicious, wolflike animal. After intercepting a tardy message to Benjamin about keeping a now-missed appointment, Barnaby visits the doctor, thinking the man might need a more reliable delivery service, especially since a missed treatment could result in "side effects of the most unfortunate kind." Sure enough, Cadwallader hires Barnaby to take similar notes to other patients, all poor, lonely people who disappear soon after. What is the sinister doctor up to—and what is his relationship with the owner of a fashionable fur salon? The setting resembles Sherlock Holmes's London as seen in a shadowed, slightly warped mirror. There are hansom cabs, high-gabled row houses, and foul rat-infested slums, but mad scientists hold sway and fiendish creatures lurk in odd corners. Eerie, angular black-and-white drawings complement the atmospheric text. Fans of the macabre will enjoy this first entry in a series by the "The Edge Chronicles" (Random) creators.—Elaine E. Knight, Lincoln Elementary Schools, ILCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.