Shirley Holmes is far from your normal teenaged girl. Like her great uncle, the famous Sherlock Holmes, Shirley is a keen observer and tries to remain detached from everything. Her closest friend is her upper class boarding school's scholarship student, Bo Sawchuk, who helps her solve each case, deal with the disapearence of her explorer mother, and keeps her as human as possible. Yet, unlike her distant relation, Shirley learns not allow people like her arch nemisis Molly Hardy to get the better of her and that sometimes it's okay to just be a kid.