Garment of Shadows

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Garment of Shadows (Bantam, 2012).


After the last time that I wrote about Laurie R. King's series about Russell and Holmes, I was baffled to learn that the two-volume "God of the Hive" stories had not really gone over very well with the author's fans, a loud number of whom decried what they thought was padding and the cliffhanger ending to the first of the books. This loud number of people is as wrong as wrong could be, those books are terrific. I also got a delightful note from the ageless "Mary Russell" herself on Twitter, informing me that I should not have trusted the biographer William S. Baring-Gould in anything that he claimed about Holmes's son; after all, said biographer made the mad claim that the immortal Holmes had died at some point. Fair point. If our daring duo don't wish to die, I can get behind that.

But not as much as I can get behind a novel in which Mary Russell visits her stepson Nero Wolfe in Manhattan one day. I just cannot get behind Damian at all. I'm allowed to be stubborn. I'm also allowed to breathe a heavy sigh of discontent whenever Russell and Holmes' friends Ali and Mahmoud show up in one of King's chronicles. And the author is allowed to write a book so good that I have little choice but to admit that she mostly beat up my prejudices against these characters. Neat trick.

Garment of Shadows opens with Holmes in Morocco, looking for his wife. Mary Russell was last seen here in the lighthearted novel Pirate King, but she's obtained a head injury and has lost her memory. With the country at a critical point, breaking away from the control of colonial France and Spain and fighting between rival tribes for independence, this is not a good time for our heroine to be at anything other than peak condition. Holmes deduces that Ali and Mahmoud are also in the region, all of our heroes the pawns of Mycroft, as ever manipulating events for the benefit of British interests.

It's an interesting tactic, keeping the reader and the lead character completely in the dark, and, as understanding slowly dawns, it's into a time and place that's probably not very familiar to readers. We may have an idea of which direction Morocco moved in the modern era, but who's to say the political upheavals after World War Two through the 1960s wouldn't have completely changed the direction that Morocco was heading in 1924? For that matter, who's to say that British interests are in anybody else's?

There were moments where I was skeptical, and moments where I had to step back and reread some of the descriptions so that I could get a better visual sense of what was going on - it's an awful habit I have, being so caught up in dialogue that I miss vital scenery and staging - but this was certainly a pleasure to read and kept me guessing throughout. Recommended.

The God of the Hive

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of The God of the Hive (Bantam, 2010).


It's really not fair to be disappointed by a story because it doesn't fit into your preconceived fan notions and your narrative. The story is the author's narrative, not yours. Yours are only wishes. The author is under no obligation to grant them.

Back in the second of Laurie R. King's novels of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, there is a fleeting reference to Holmes having a son, Damian. The matter is shoved under the rug. Now, among some Holmes fans - by no means a majority or a consensus - there's a belief that during the "missing years" after Reichenbach Falls, Holmes looked up Irene Adler and spent some time with her and they had a son. Among some of that subset of fans - by no means a majority or a consensus - there's a belief that Adler raised their son on her own, and that boy grew up to be Nero Wolfe. That is the greatest fan theory of them all. I love it to pieces.

Sadly, King belongs to the first camp but not the second. And I felt so certain that she was One Of Us. It was a writer named William S. Baring-Gould who concocted the "son of Sherlock" theory in 1962. King had already included this man's real-life grandfather, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, as a character in the fourth of her series of novels, The Moor, and revealed that the reverend was Holmes' godfather. So it's not like she could have been unaware of this theory. She just had another direction for the son of Sherlock.

Before continuing, I should point out that one writer has, using a pseudonym for the still-copyrighted Wolfe, written two novels set during World War One in which Holmes and his son, "Auguste Lupa," work together. The writer is John Lescroart, and I enjoyed those books so darn much that I started reading his subsequent, much longer series of contemporary legal thrillers featuring a revolving series of featured protagonists. A lawyer named Dismas Hardy takes the lead role in most of these books, and I enjoy that universe so darn much that I'm forever in Baring-Gould's debt for coming up with the theory, because I'd probably never have made my way, via Lupa, to the wonderful world of Hardy, Abe Glitsky and Gina Roake without it.

And I should point out how selfishly disappointed I was in Robert Goldsborough's recent Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, a book which is solid and entertaining and doesn't do a darn thing wrong except miss out on the spectacular opportunity to introduce a Wolfe who had not established his routine yet. I really wanted to see a man on the cusp of becoming that set-in-stone icon, still putting his ready-for-caricature rules together.

So when Damian Adler showed up at Holmes and Russell's door at the beginning of 2009's Language of Bees, a book that I read in late June, I punched the air with excitement because - surely! - we were about to meet the proto-Wolfe. We don't. There's just no way that Damian could possibly be the same man.

The Language of Bees and 2010's God of the Hive are so closely joined that they might as well have had "part one" and "part two" inscribed on them. It's one very long epic, set over the course of several weeks that sees Damian swallowing his pride and asking his father for help in finding his missing wife. In short order, he also goes missing and his wife's body is discovered, and the police want a word or two with him, and with Holmes and Russell about what they know. The powerful cult leader at the center of things - sort of a pastiche of Alistair Crowley - looks set to be one of Holmes' greatest adversaries, particularly when "part one" ends in a remote corner of Scotland, with Holmes and the grievously wounded Damian looking for discreet medical attention, while Russell, trying to get Damian's small daughter - good heavens, our 24 year-old heroine is a step-grandmother! - back to London, realizes that their enemy was not killed as they believed, and is still alive...

God of the Hive then twists things even more deliciously, as it's revealed that the cult leader is himself a patsy for an even more powerful villain, a master manipulator who removes even the mighty Mycroft Holmes from the state of play. King then pulls a twist about Mycroft that's so remarkable that I broke apart completely, abandoning every rule that I hold dear, and thumbed through the back twenty pages of the book because - surely not! - I just could not believe her moxie in doing that. I'm not going to tell you what "that" is, but it's sort of like asking whether Molly Ivins can say that (can she?) after she'd already said it.. Nope, there it is. She did it. (Well, that would be telling.)

The whole book's a headspinner, with new characters dropped into the narrative like small atomic bombs, their loyalty questionable and their motives uncertain. The most bewildering is this lord of misrule type, who's a mad mix between Robin Goodfellow and Lord Sebastian Flyte, and how trustworthy this guy is, even after finishing the book, I can't say. What I can share is that even though parts of the story had me biting my lip in unhappiness over the direction things were going, I was completely and thoroughly unable to guess what would possibly be happening next, and who would be safe. This is the tenth book in the series. For any series to go on so long and still be so completely unpredictable is a really good thing indeed.

Now if somebody, somewhere, would kindly write me some dense, novel-length fanfic set in 1924 involving Russell, Holmes, and a son who's a decade away from becoming Nero Wolfe when he moves to Manhattan, and which is one-tenth as engaging and as weird as this, I'll pay decent money. Not a lot, but decent. I wish that I had the talent to write it myself.

Heh. If I did, I'd have to use pseudonyms for Wolfe and for Russell. Laws!

The Game

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded, and maybe you'd like to think about reading them as well. This time, a review of The Game (Bantam, 2004).



Credit where it's due: with The Game, her seventh novel of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, Laurie King succeeded in keeping me worried out of my skull that something really unpleasant was right around the corner for our heroes. The villain of the piece proves to be dangerously demented, and a combination of insanity and infinite resources really looks like it's enough to finally beat the invunerable Holmes.

Getting to the meat of this one takes a little patience, however. I was unsatisfied with O Jerusalem, even as reading the sixth novel, Justice Hall, proved why it was necessary for King to fill in the characters' backstory in that longwinded fashion, because of what felt like research overwhelming the narrative. It seemed like each nuance of the foreign culture, and every minute of the arduous travel, had to be detailed in minutiae. Here, as 1924 dawns and Russell and Holmes travel to India to search for the missing Kimball O'Hara (you'll remember him if you've read your Kipling), King again seems more interested in immersing readers in the culture than getting on with the story. I concede that she's playing by the rules; Holmes' powers as a master of disguise and an undercover operator rely on his ability to completely immerse himself into his new identities, after all, but it can become a little wearying.

It's probably more snobbery on my part than any fault of the fiction. It was always amusing when Doyle had Holmes vanish for weeks on end, only to turn up and startle Dr. Watson with his reappearance somehow. Something about the hoops that Mary has to jump through can't help but bother me. Sure, I suppose being uprooted and forced to learn foreign languages and etiquette at a moment's notice comes as part and parcel of being married to the world's greatest detective, and Mary knew exactly what she was getting into some years previously, and Holmes would never have allowed himself to fall in love with anybody not capable of doing the job.

Still, with one hair-raising adventure after another, and three novels spanning three continents, set across a period of less than five months, I understand Mary's exhaustion and sympathize wholeheartedly with her when she says that the next time her wretched brother-in-law needs some job doing, they should decline and relax for a year or two. Unfortunately, there's enough of a hint dropped towards the end that I'm pretty sure the summer of 1924 will see our heroes in Savannah, of all places, looking for a mysterious woman who was on the steamer to Aden with them. Poor Mary!

O Jerusalem

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded, and maybe you'd like to think about reading them as well. This time, a review of O Jerusalem (Bantam, 1999).



This one was a bit of a challenge. After four novels in her series of revisionist Sherlock Holmes stories, Laurie King elected to use the fifth to plug an old plot hole in the first, throwing off and disappointing any reader who was hoping to see the characters grow and progress. Back in that first novel (reviewed here), Holmes and his protege Mary Russell are forced to flee England after their unseen foe proves, with a bomb attack, that she's one step ahead of them. The narrative then skips forward, noting that it was many months before they could return, and that Mycroft Holmes had found a job for them in British-occupied Palestine, among other travels.

So O Jerusalem is the story of that job, and it's a real slog to get through. I can understand why King wished to come back to it. The fourth book in her series, The Moor, vividly brings the location to life, so that it is as much a character in the story as any human, and King's lingering discussion of topography and history is as entrancing as the most satisfying backstory and character development. She clearly had developed the talent, over the course of her nineties work, to attempt the same here, with endless, detailed focus on the desert sands, the cities they visit, and the difficulties in Russell adapting to the Holy Land's culture.

Yet it doesn't work for me, not at all. You may chalk this up to personal disinterest in the region or my deficiencies as a prose reader if you like, but to be honest, the "leaving the country" material in The Beekeeper's Apprentice was easily the only skippable section of that novel for me, and in the short space of a few months between reading Apprentice and this, I had entirely forgotten that Holmes and Russell had left England at all. As a character piece, hiding Mary Russell under shoe polish and spectacles and posing as a quiet and unassuming man lost its luster almost instantly, and as an adventure story, the hundred-odd pages of running in circles, our heroes "tested" by their minders in the Holy Land before being trusted to meet the local spymaster who needs them to uncover and foil an assassination scheme, are agonizing. After a day's reading, I realized that I still had no idea what the plot of this novel was, and became frustrated and bored as King lingered on one set piece after another, looking for any kind of narrative thread to link them.

All of this compounds the basic problem going into the book in the first place. In each of the previous four novels in the series, King was able to surprise and blindside me with a new development of the characters and their relationship, and these "reveals," the understanding that what will come next, are part of the thrill of reading the stories in the first place. That's a testament to King's skill at making believable, engaging characters and more than just another dry Holmes pastiche. But we already know going in what will come next for Holmes and Russell going in to O Jerusalem: they'll go back to England and finish that more interesting adventure. Even to somebody who's begun this series, I can't recommend this book at all. I've certainly no interest in trying it again.

A Letter of Mary

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of A Letter of Mary (St. Martin's, 1997).



In the third novel in her series of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes novels, Laurie R. King sees the couple's home ransacked and vandalized shortly after they take possession of a first-century papyrus which may be a letter from Mary Magdalene confirming what Christian doctrine has denied: that she was one of Christ's disciples. This happens while they are in London to identify the body of the scholar who left them the document for safekeeping. It looks like somebody wants this damning evidence silenced.

I find it strange, the way King captures the voices of other people's characters, and projects them to her audience, better than the ones that she created herself. By her third novel, she's got an amazing rhythm down for Sherlock Holmes, and writes him as well or better than any other writer of pastiches such as this. Mycroft, too, is as comfortable to read as it is watching Charles Grey put in a guest appearance in the 1980-90s Granada TV series. In fact, my interest in her revisionist novels was sparked by learning that Lord Peter Wimsey would be putting in a small cameo at some point. He's in this book for about five pages and he's so absolutely perfect that I can't help but wish that it was King who had received the job of completing Dorothy Sayers' unfinished Thrones, Dominations manuscript.

But Mary Russell herself I still have problems with. I can't visualize the character, much as I am trying. Sherlock Holmes's wife is a woman in her late forties trapped in the body of a 23 year-old. She never reads as being completely genuine to me, and is very much a product of the modern age, and not a character who could conceivably have been created in the 1920s. Further, the plot itself is very much of its time. Though it predates The Da Vinci Code by six years, it's still tapping into a very modern notion of the Church suppressing potentially ruinous old documents. Well, Irving Wallace's The Word, a book forgotten by everybody but me (and I only know it because David Janssen was in the TV adaptation), possibly started the zeitgiest back in 1972, but you still can't imagine a book with a mindset anything like this actually being written in the twenties.

That said, the book, while sometimes difficult for me to embrace because of the pecuilarities of the main character, is still a pleasant read. It's a story full of red herrings and misdirections, where avenues of investigation led me to expect an absolutely certain conclusion, and yet I was pleased and tickled to learn how very wrong I was. I wouldn't call this a great book, but it was certainly an entertaining one, and the three mornings I devoted to it were certainly well-spent. I shall have to tackle the fourth in the series next month.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of The Beekeeper's Apprentice (St. Martin's Press, 1994).



There's just never enough time, is there? I've been curious about Laurie R. King's stories of Sherlock Holmes' later life and his time as mentor to the young detective Mary Russell in the 1920s for simply ages, and I only this month cleared enough stuff from the reading pile to tackle the first of King's eight novels in the series. The Beekeeper's Apprentice has fifteen year-old Mary Russell run across the retired Holmes in Sussex. Holmes has retained the services of his old housekeeper, and she encourages the headstrong, incredibly intelligent Mary to visit again. Over time, Holmes takes Mary under his wing as his apprentice, and they work a couple of small local cases where she proves her abilities.

It's only after Mary goes to college that the stakes are raised considerably. When the daughter of an American politician is abducted, the parents insist that Holmes be called from retirement to track down the criminals, and Mary leaves the dormitory to join him on the trail. But their success finds them a new and dangerous enemy, who has been waiting for many years to make a move against Holmes...

Honestly, I enjoyed this even more than I thought I might. Sherlock Holmes pastiches are a dime a dozen (three years back, I discussed William Baring-Gould, pretty much the patron saint of fanfic), but I thought this was done with a light touch and an honest commitment to keeping true to Doyle's character while presenting him from another angle. The story is told as though Mary, much later in life, has taken up Dr. Watson's old job as Holmes's biographer and has written her own memoirs for later publication.

Russell tells us more about her own life and experiences than Watson ever did, and it is very fun to read about her days in college in 1918. With twinkling references both to the original canon (fifteen year-old Mary asking what will happen in the next installment of the then-serialized Valley of Fear) and fan speculation (Irene Adler, although not that giant rat), it's clear that Laurie King has done a great deal of research to make her novel appealing to either beginning readers or veterans. I had a great time reading it, and I look forward to starting her second novel later this summer.