Murder in the Mission House

[bibliogramma]

A Monstrous Regiment of Women, Laurie R. King

This is the second of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries to be published, and I enjoyed it quite as completely as I did the first.

In this novel, Russell, about to finish with university and just on the verge of reaching her majority and gaining control of her fortune, meets an old friend who has become involved with a charismatic woman preacher and social reformer, Margery Childe. Russell, who has taken degree in theology (and in chemistry, but that is much less relevant here) is at first interested in Childe's profoundly feminist but theologically naive interpretation of Scripture, but following an attempt on her friend's life, and the discovery of a series of deaths associated with Childe's organisation, the detective in her takes over.

The Russell/Holmes relationship heats up somewhat - well, quite a bit toward the end - and while I'm not entirely certain that I would have written that aspect of the story the same way the King did, still it worked for me. However, after reading this novel, which is the second in publication order, I read somewhere that O Jerusalem is actually the next novel in chronological order, so I must read that next. Possibly it will fill in the gaps that made a few notes in the advancing Russell/Holmes relation seem not quite in key.

Comments

[inkylj.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of these, but I've been kicking around the idea of trying one. How're the mysteries as mysteries? I've read some books where the mystery was clearly just a device to hang the rest of the plot on, and came off as frustratingly underdeveloped.

However, after reading this novel, which is the second in publication order, I read somewhere that O Jerusalem is actually the next novel in chronological order, so I must read that next.

Wow, really? Most of the book people I know are pretty fussy about reading in publication order -- is this not an issue for you? (A friend of mine is actually going so far as to read single short stories from a collection, interspersed between the novels they were written before/after)

[bibliogramma.livejournal.com]

The mysteries themselves are fairly good so far - mind you, I am not generally a huge fan of mysteries, it's the characters and processes that interest me more than the mysteries. They are very Holmsian mysteries, in my view - sometimes a little more suspense then pure mystery, and sometimes you have a fairly good sense of roughly the "game" is leading, it's the fun of watching how Holmes (and in this case Holmes and/or Russell) get you there that's the most fun.

As for publication order - I'm not a purist in this respect, no, although I usually much prefer to read in publication order as long as publication order is roughly consonant with internal chronological order. When they diverge, it's often a judgement call in each specific case as to whether I prefer publication or chronological order.

In this case, I'm thinking of going out of publication order because I feel there was something a bit askew in the linkage between the way the Holmes/Russell relationship left off after The Beekeeper's Apprentice and started off in this book. If O Jerusalem - which is I think the fourth book in terms of publication order - actually is set between the two I've already read, then I do want to see if it fills in the gap, so to speak - largely because a big part of what is driving my interest in this series so far is the recreation of Holmes' character, the development of Russell's, and the dynamics between them.