Laurie King: The Murder of Mary Russell

Laurie King’s The Murder of Mary Russell is not, in fact, about Mary Russell, and - not that anyone will be surprised to hear this - while Mary Russell is indeed feared to be dead by various people for a portion of the book, she is quite alive the whole time.

This is something much more interesting, it is a book about Mrs. Hudson. King has invented a detailed and fascinating past for Holmes’ apparently long-suffering landlady, drawing on bits and pieces from the canon, particularly the early case of the blackmailing of his friend Victor Trevor’s father which was connected to loss of the Gloria Scott at sea. In order to tell her tale, King posits that the conclusion to the case, which Holmes tells Watson and Watson then writes about, was a fabrication to conceal the connection between the blackmailing sailor in the case, James Hudson, and his seemingly unimpeachable landlady Mrs. Hudson.

I’m not going to go into much further detail here, because it is a truly fascinating, if rather improbable backstory for Mrs. Hudson, and the manner in which she became Holmes’ landlady, and watching the whole thing unfold and finally knit together is the greatest pleasure in reading the book.

Suffice it to say that Mrs. Hudson’s past - and Holmes’ initial involvement in her life at a very crucial point - comes back to haunt her, Holmes, Russell, and even Mycroft, and ultimately leads to a parting of the ways between two characters who have been bound together by a shared secret for over forty years.

This is, I think, the best book in the Mary Russell series in quite some time.

Kelly Sue DeConnick: Bitch Planet Volume 2: President Bitch

Bitch Planet Volume 2: President Bitch (containing issues 6 through 10 of the comic series written by Kelly Sue DeConnick) continues to tell a brilliantly dystopic and uncomfortably violent story. As with the first volume, I can’t quite say I like or enjoy reading it, it’s too raw and too close to reality, in spirit if not in fact. It’s hard to read about women in prison for being insufficiently docile, and not hear the chants of ‘Lock her up’ heard at Trump rallies, or think of women of colour from Joanne Little to Sandra Bland and on and on, imprisoned, abused, raped, killed, in jails and prisons, or thousands of migrant women detained for the ‘crime’ of seeking refuge in the richest country in the world. Feminist dystopias are hard things to read if you happen to be a woman in this time.

But, on with the story. Volume One established the scene and set up a situation where former athlete Kamau agrees to lead a team of women inmates in the Metaton tournament that is a huge part of the authoritarian, patriarchal culture in which a place like Bitch Planet can exist. Volume 2 begins with a flashback telling the story of Bitch Planet inmate Meiko Maki, who was murdered during a Metaton practice session at the conclusion of Volume 1. In the present, multiple plot threads are advancing. Meiko’s father, Makoto Maki, an engineer, has been assigned the task of building a Metaton stadium on the Bitch Planet. He agrees, hoping to see his daughter - not knowing she is dead. Kamau has convinced a guard to get a map of the prison for her, and convinced that her sister is being held in a special cell. We, however, have seen that her sister Morowa, a trans woman, is being held in the general population in a special section with other trans women. Whitney, the official who offered Kamau the leadership of the Metaton tram, has been stripped of her position and imprisoned fir Meiko’s murder - and is now Kamau’s cellmate.

When Makoto is allowed a ‘virtual interview’ with Meiko, he realises something is very wrong, and uses his authority to get access to the prison controls, shut down the power and open all the cell doors. Kamau takes the opportunity to look for her sister, but instead, discovers that the mysterious unnamed prisoner in the special cell is an older black woman named Eleanor Doane, whom Kamau addresses as Madame President. The volume ends as revolution, both in the prison and on Earth begins.

There is a very raw, very real feeling to this narrative. It’s powerful, it is saying things that need to be said. It’s profoundly intersectional, and one of the things about it that is so very right is the way that it shows us that while sexism causes damage and injury to all women, it’s the multiply marginalised, black women, trans women, women who cannot conform to male-created standards of beauty, who suffer most. It acknowledges the reality that women of colour have always been more likely to be seen as transgressive and non-compliant, and be punished for it by the justice system, which has always operated for the benefit of the multiply privileged - those who are white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender and predominantly men.

I can hardly bear to read it, but I’m going to keep on doing so anyway. If you are interested, I urge you to read the individual comics, not the trade compilations, because of the excellent articles by feminist, anti-racist and trans activists and scholars. Bitch Planet is more than just a powerful feminist narrative, it’s an experience.