The Beekeeper's Apprentice, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King

[lightreads]

Well now. These are the first three in the Mary Russell series of period mysteries. We begin when fifteen-year-old Russell – a very bright young lady – literally stumbles across one Mr. Sherlock Holmes out in the fields observing bees. This is an older Holmes, years after much of the Doyle canon, semi-retired to the country with his experiments and cocaine. He and Russell strike up a friendship, a teaching relationship, and then a partnership (yeah, that kind too, eventually). The mysteries are very Holmesian – the first involves a twisted plot of revenge, the second a cluster of suspicious murders around a feminist temple, and the third an explosive archaeological find and a troubling death.

King has the language down beautifully, the rhythms of Holmes’s quick mind and quicker tongue. And the mysteries are truly delightful artifacts of the style. The stories are also packaged appropriately – not Doyle recounting Watson’s tales, but King publishing Mary Russell’s manuscripts. It’s beautifully constructed derivative fiction, but King is also unafraid of exercising the powerful and alternative lens she has in Mary, a feminist, a scholar of theology though not a believer, a mind to match Holmes’s in a way Watson never did.

Holmes and I were a match from the beginning. He towered over me in experience, but never did his abilities at observation and analysis awe me as they did
Watson. My own eyes and mind functioned in precisely the same way. It was familiar territory.

So, yes, I freely admit that my Holmes is not the Holmes of Watson. To continue with the analogy, my perspective, my brush technique, my use of colour and shade, are all entirely different from his. The subject is essentially the same; it is the eyes and the hands of the
artist that change.

All around well done, sly, sometimes funny stories. And I should mention that I literally squealed aloud in the middle of the train when who but Lord Peter Wimsey should make a fabulous, chatty cameo in A Letter of Mary -- let’s hear it for expired copyright!

I have reservations, of course. Holmes’s rougher edges are smoothed a bit too much for my taste, both his wild moods and his substance abuse. And the romance, though both beautifully and hilariously written, didn’t do much for me emotionally. Still, a good time all around, and I just admire this sort of enterprise on principle.

Comments

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Their initial meeting and attendant dialogue really yanked me in. Man, but there are a couple great scenes like that that could sell me pretty much anything.