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Starbuck Family Adventure #1
Double Trouble Squared
When their father accepts a new job in England, July, Liberty, and their family find themselves exploring the foggy streets of London. The twins try to discover the source of the voice only they can hear--a voice that needs their help. Using telepathy and their individual talents, the twins uncover a long-lost manuscript of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, along with the ghost of Sherlock Holmes’s forgotten twin brother.
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 1991
4 people are currently reading
274 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn Lasky
266 books2,279 followersKathryn Lasky, also known as Kathryn Lasky Knight and E. L. Swann, is an award-winning American author of over one hundred books for children and adults. Best known for the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, her work has been translated into 19 languages and includes historical fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 19, 2018
I started rereading these books as part of a larger process of revisiting my own preconceptions regarding children's fiction, and rethinking the commonly-held adult belief that anything written for children must by default be immature, dumbed-down, and overall not worth the time of any self-respecting adult. Some of the works I've revisited have pleasantly surprised me, but sometimes I feel legitimately justified in saying that I am too old for this.
The adventure parts... could be fun. One thing I always liked about these books was the aspect of exploration, of getting to know a new area and a new culture and really feeling the history behind it. The villainous phantom who stalked the twins all over London and menaced them with a snake was also legitimately terrifying, and being supernatural in origin was only a small part of that.
Eventually, though, we reached a point where a lot of those ~horribly unfair~ conundrums the twins were facing were things that my crotchety old self is no longer equipped to sympathize with. "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah we have to go out and do stuff with our mother whom we haven't seen for the past several weeks and won't see again for several more! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah it's so unfair that we have to do what our mother wants on her birthday, never mind that everyone did exactly what we wanted when it was our birthday! Waaaaaaaaaaah we have to wait two whole days to check out that thing that's going to be exactly where we left it in two days' time! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah you're making us eat bangers? Waaaaaaaaaaaah why do we have to eat English food while we're living in England? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah why can't we go to McDonald's already?"
Yeah, those bangers are so weird and icky.
Meanwhile, I'm currently living in China and I have been served this. Suck. It. UP.
Liberty and July's melodramatics over their father coming to their school to talk to their class about the environment of all things, horror of horrors, also made me roll my eyes. Did this in any way result in them being bullied or made fun of or becoming a laughingstock in the eyes of their classmates? Not that we ever hear of, yet apparently they're "dying of embarrassment" and "this is practically child abuse." Look, by this point I've consumed enough works of fiction featuring actual child abuse that I'm having a really hard time drumming up any sympathy.
Do feel free to elaborate on how your father embarrassing you by coming to your school and trying to get your classmates invested in a worthy cause is "practically child abuse". Go on, I'll wait.
When I was reading this at the age of twelve, a lot of this probably did resonate with me. A couple of decades on, though, complete with having seen multiple real problems both IRL and in fiction, it just comes across as a couple of spoiled brats making mountains out of molehills because they don't know how good they have it.
The other thing that bothered me was that the Starbucks can sometimes be really judgmental. Sure, Aunt Honey is pretty obnoxious, but she means well and more often than not she's legitimately trying to be helpful; does she really deserve for the twins to be constantly bashing her and calling her fat to her face while Hiding Behind theLanguage Telepathy Barrier? (Her hostility to the twins' telepathy was always played up as paranoia on her part, but she was not wrong, they really were saying nasty things about her the overwhelming majority of the time.) The kids come by it honestly, too; at one point their father gets all righteously indignant at a BBC weatherman for forecasting the weather.
Well what do you expect him to do, Putnam, abandon his studio to swim out and help them?
...I probably am being too hard on the characters, because it is for the most part just kids being kids, and me just being too old to relate anymore. It's not you, Kathryn Lasky, it's me.
And, y'know, I did enjoy the commentary on what happens, literarily, to characters who never manage to make the final cut of a draft. I've got a few myself from my earliest amateur writing years that I realized in hindsight simply were not viable as interesting, well-rounded protagonists that real people would be able to relate to, but that doesn't mean they just disappeared; they're still there, floating around in my headspace. Literary ghosts, if you will.
It was also more amusing than the author probably intended when
The adventure parts... could be fun. One thing I always liked about these books was the aspect of exploration, of getting to know a new area and a new culture and really feeling the history behind it. The villainous phantom who stalked the twins all over London and menaced them with a snake was also legitimately terrifying, and being supernatural in origin was only a small part of that.
Eventually, though, we reached a point where a lot of those ~horribly unfair~ conundrums the twins were facing were things that my crotchety old self is no longer equipped to sympathize with. "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah we have to go out and do stuff with our mother whom we haven't seen for the past several weeks and won't see again for several more! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah it's so unfair that we have to do what our mother wants on her birthday, never mind that everyone did exactly what we wanted when it was our birthday! Waaaaaaaaaaah we have to wait two whole days to check out that thing that's going to be exactly where we left it in two days' time! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah you're making us eat bangers? Waaaaaaaaaaaah why do we have to eat English food while we're living in England? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah why can't we go to McDonald's already?"
Yeah, those bangers are so weird and icky.
Meanwhile, I'm currently living in China and I have been served this. Suck. It. UP.
Liberty and July's melodramatics over their father coming to their school to talk to their class about the environment of all things, horror of horrors, also made me roll my eyes. Did this in any way result in them being bullied or made fun of or becoming a laughingstock in the eyes of their classmates? Not that we ever hear of, yet apparently they're "dying of embarrassment" and "this is practically child abuse." Look, by this point I've consumed enough works of fiction featuring actual child abuse that I'm having a really hard time drumming up any sympathy.
Do feel free to elaborate on how your father embarrassing you by coming to your school and trying to get your classmates invested in a worthy cause is "practically child abuse". Go on, I'll wait.
When I was reading this at the age of twelve, a lot of this probably did resonate with me. A couple of decades on, though, complete with having seen multiple real problems both IRL and in fiction, it just comes across as a couple of spoiled brats making mountains out of molehills because they don't know how good they have it.
The other thing that bothered me was that the Starbucks can sometimes be really judgmental. Sure, Aunt Honey is pretty obnoxious, but she means well and more often than not she's legitimately trying to be helpful; does she really deserve for the twins to be constantly bashing her and calling her fat to her face while Hiding Behind the
"My goodness, isn't he cheerful. The nerve! [...] There he sits in his cozy little studio warning of gales in every quadrant the BBC covers, and he wishes the sailors good sailing."
Well what do you expect him to do, Putnam, abandon his studio to swim out and help them?
...I probably am being too hard on the characters, because it is for the most part just kids being kids, and me just being too old to relate anymore. It's not you, Kathryn Lasky, it's me.
And, y'know, I did enjoy the commentary on what happens, literarily, to characters who never manage to make the final cut of a draft. I've got a few myself from my earliest amateur writing years that I realized in hindsight simply were not viable as interesting, well-rounded protagonists that real people would be able to relate to, but that doesn't mean they just disappeared; they're still there, floating around in my headspace. Literary ghosts, if you will.
It was also more amusing than the author probably intended when
April 8, 2009
This is a great book with alot of suspense. It is not good for younger ones to read at night, because it gives you the chills. This is defidently a story to read.
October 6, 2018
I remember reading this book as a kid and LOVING it. I just spent 10 minutes googling what I could remember to figure out the name. Definitely a book I'd recommend.
April 24, 2011
An Amazeing book!
What happens to Characters that Authors create and write about but never publish?
What if they live on and become literary ghosts almost like human ghosts but not quite as real. it takes a speacial level of ESP to contact one of these.
So this is the story what happens when two sets of telepathic twins meet the literary ghost of the World's Greatest Detective. Not Sherlock Holmes he got published. This is Arthur Conan Doyle's Other expert of dectuctive reasoning. Yea the one nobody has every heard of.
This literary spirit is reastless and now it's up to Double Trouble to find his lost manuscript.
What happens to Characters that Authors create and write about but never publish?
What if they live on and become literary ghosts almost like human ghosts but not quite as real. it takes a speacial level of ESP to contact one of these.
So this is the story what happens when two sets of telepathic twins meet the literary ghost of the World's Greatest Detective. Not Sherlock Holmes he got published. This is Arthur Conan Doyle's Other expert of dectuctive reasoning. Yea the one nobody has every heard of.
This literary spirit is reastless and now it's up to Double Trouble to find his lost manuscript.
January 13, 2013
Definitely one of my favorite books as a child! I read this book so many times, and it was just a fun adventure! This kick-started my love of Sherlock Holmes stories and my fascination with telepathy. So enjoyable!
October 18, 2014
Quanto adoravo questo libro da bambina... L'idea di avere un fratello gemello e di poterci parlare telepaticamente... oh, my. Cosa poteva esserci di meglio per una ragazzina di dieci anni, appassionata di Sherlock Holmes?!
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August 5, 2016When their father gets a new job in London, July and Liberty find themselves in the foggy streets. They hear voices in there heads. Who is that? Can they solve it? Find out in the book Double Trouble Squared.
February 27, 2008
loved this book! 2 sets of telepathic twins that solve mysteries and have fun abroad! definitely well worth it
March 11, 2009
I loved this mystery book about a pair of boy/girl telekinetic twins who solve mysteries in England Sherlock Holmes style.
October 8, 2009
This is the book that got me started in the paranormal genre!
May 14, 2020
I loved this series as a kid and thought it would be fun to reread them.
This one wasn't as good as I remembered but it was still a fun read. I think it might have been done if the chosen phrasings like "literary stillborn" that was jarring as an adult that I wouldn't have picked up on when I was younger. I got the internet but they used it so often that it took me out of the story.
I also don't think there was much of a threat. But I can see how a younger person would relate to the idea that there could be this threat and having things feel much larger than they actually are.
Either way I love the telepathic twins and I'm eager to continue my reread with book 2
This one wasn't as good as I remembered but it was still a fun read. I think it might have been done if the chosen phrasings like "literary stillborn" that was jarring as an adult that I wouldn't have picked up on when I was younger. I got the internet but they used it so often that it took me out of the story.
I also don't think there was much of a threat. But I can see how a younger person would relate to the idea that there could be this threat and having things feel much larger than they actually are.
Either way I love the telepathic twins and I'm eager to continue my reread with book 2
April 30, 2021
I read this to my kids years ago but didn’t keep it, then had to search the internet for a story about a ghost Sherlock Holmes character. Now I wonder why I didn’t keep it because it’s a great story with an interesting premise of twins who can telepathically communicate. I enjoyed following their travels around London on Google Earth and the clever Sherlock Holmes and intersection of fiction and reality within this fictional story.
December 21, 2025
While the concepts in this book were interesting, I found it a little lacking. I wouldn't bother with it when it's below your reading level, and I'm not sure if I want to read the whole series, even though I don't usually leave a series unfinished.
December 24, 2018
Simple, bit young for me but nicely written. A 2 hour foray into my childhood.
September 25, 2021
Wow, this wasn’t very good.
April 24, 2025
I think I was in 3rd grade (1993-94) when I got "Shadows in the Water" from a Scholastic book fair. It's one of only a handful of books from grade school that I still own, all these years many later. I positively loved the Starbuck twins, and yet, for some unfathomable reason, I never looked for the other books in the series. I knew it was a series, but I never sought out the others. Fast forward 25+ years, and I'm in the children's room at my library (workplace), and the name LASKY on a spine catches my eye. I pulled out "Double Trouble Squared," feeling a tingle of long-lost recognition, checked it out to myself, then set to devouring it.
Now, onto the spoilers. As a voracious reader who grew into a writer, I LOVE the idea of literary ghosts, stillborn characters who aren't laid to rest because they never truly existed. (I've also always been a Sherlockian, so that element appealed to me as well, and I feel like the "implausibility" was handled exceptionally well!)
The divide -- and overlap -- between inductive and deductive reasoning was genius. It made Shadrach and Sherlock feel more plausible than simply saying, "In an early draft, Sherlock had a twin." It gave him a very valid "raison d'etre" that is often lacking in newer adult Sherlock pastiche pieces.
One review I read complained that the kids felt spoiled and "didn't know how good they had it." While not entirely untrue -- especially, as the reviewer said, when taking into account newer and edgier YA books -- it made me wonder how many 11-turning-12 year-olds have that kind of self-awareness? If they seem self-absorbed... well, what kid that age *isn't*? Between lack of worldly experience and nascent hormones, everything *feels*"all-important, do-or-die. So I understand the kids being impatient with distractions from their quest.
I feel like Lasky did a (mostly) brilliant job of representing what it feels like to be a kid (in that era, when I grew up). The younger twins are a little "older"-feeling than 5 sometimes, but given how good the story was, I think I can forgive that!
Now, onto the spoilers. As a voracious reader who grew into a writer, I LOVE the idea of literary ghosts, stillborn characters who aren't laid to rest because they never truly existed. (I've also always been a Sherlockian, so that element appealed to me as well, and I feel like the "implausibility" was handled exceptionally well!)
The divide -- and overlap -- between inductive and deductive reasoning was genius. It made Shadrach and Sherlock feel more plausible than simply saying, "In an early draft, Sherlock had a twin." It gave him a very valid "raison d'etre" that is often lacking in newer adult Sherlock pastiche pieces.
One review I read complained that the kids felt spoiled and "didn't know how good they had it." While not entirely untrue -- especially, as the reviewer said, when taking into account newer and edgier YA books -- it made me wonder how many 11-turning-12 year-olds have that kind of self-awareness? If they seem self-absorbed... well, what kid that age *isn't*? Between lack of worldly experience and nascent hormones, everything *feels*"all-important, do-or-die. So I understand the kids being impatient with distractions from their quest.
I feel like Lasky did a (mostly) brilliant job of representing what it feels like to be a kid (in that era, when I grew up). The younger twins are a little "older"-feeling than 5 sometimes, but given how good the story was, I think I can forgive that!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews