1994; 405 pages. First in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. Genre : Mystery. New Aurthor? : Yes. Overall Rating : 6*/10.
.
Beware, criminal element! There's a new crime-fighting team afoot. Old and retired Sherlock Holmes has taken on a 15-year-old precocious protégée, Mary Russell. It'll take her a couple years to learn all about footprints, fibers, disguises, tailing suspects, tobaccos, chemistry (yay!), and the several hundred types of soils in London. Oh, and she ought to learn about bombs, too. Since someone is trying to blow Holmes and everyone associated with him (including protégées) up.
.
What's To Like...
Most of the familiar gang is here - Dr. Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Inspector Lestrade, and my personal favorite - brother Mycroft. The Baker Street Irregulars aren't, but one gets the feeling they'll show up pretty soon in one of the sequels.
.
The unlikely pairing of sleuths works, although it means the book starts off sluggishly as Mary learns the trade. The first case doesn't start until page 59, and you don't get to the main case (there are three of them) until the book's halfway over. But at least Mary is quicker on the uptake than Stephanie Plum. ;-)
.
Laurie King mimics the detecting style of Holmes quite well, but the cases themselves lack the complexity of an Arthur Conan Doyle story. See for example, The Adventure Of The Speckled Band. We will cut some slack here, as this is the debut book in the series. One hopes the mysteries "deepen" as the series progresses. OTOH, the one puzzle to solve is incredibly unfathomable. Don't waste your time trying to decipher it; just let Mary do it.
.
And a quick note to Ms. King. Your padding of the Amazon-US and Amazon-Canada reviews of this book is both blatant and excessive. I'm cool with a few self-promoting blurbs there; but when you hit triple digits, give it a rest. Also, you forgot about Amazon-UK.
.
Kewl New Words...
Peripatetic : walking around. Peroration : a flowery and highly rhetorical oration. Weald : an area of open or forested countryside (British). Sybaritic : marked by pleasure and luxury. Asperity : with severity or harshness. Vulpine : cunning like a fox. Patristics : the writings of the early Church fathers.
.
Excerpts...
I returned to Oxford the following week-end, to a winter term that was much the same as the autumn weeks had been, only more so. My main passions were becoming theoretical mathematics and the complexities of Rabbinic Judaism, two topics that are dissimilar only on the surface. (pg. 54)
.
He let himself out into the hallway, then put his head back in the door. "By the way, don't touch that machine on the desk. It's a bomb." (pg. 185)
.
"Oh. How is your back?"
"Damn my back, I do wish you would stop harping on the accursed thing. If you must know, I had it serviced again this afternoon by a retired surgeon who does a good line in illegal operations and patching up gunshot wounds. He found very little to do on it, told me to go away, and I find the topic tiresome."
I was pleased to hear his mood so improved. (pg. 241)
.
When faced with the unthinkable, one chooses the merely impossible. (pg. 300)
Laurie King makes some changes to the Conan Doyle format. Sherlock Holmes is "cleaner" - he's kicked his drug habits, and has acquired at least a semblance of Alan Alda sensitivity. Also, it doesn't take a matchmaker to sense a budding romance. OTOH, Watson fares poorly here, and the Ultimate Evil is not very ...well... Ultimate.
.
The Beekeeper's Apprentice is a decent, but not a great, addition to Holmesian literature. Your rating of the book will depend a lot on how much of a Conan Doyle "purist" you are. I happen to be a pretty staunch one. Will the mysteries get more complex as the series progresses? Or will it schlep into just another forgettable variation of chick-lit? We shall see. The book was sufficiently interesting to merit reading at least one more installment. 6 Stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment