Russell and Holmes, consulting detectives

[bibliogramma]

I've been reading more of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell novels, and continuing to enjoy them immensely. This past winter's readings:

A Letter of Mary
The Moor
O Jerusalem
Justice Hall
The Game

It's been interesting reading the series and watching how King uses her character's speciality, theological studies, in the development of some of these novel, particularly A Monstrous Regiment of Women, which I read last year, and A Letter of Mary, which I read in the past few months. A Letter of Mary deals with the mystery surrounding the death of archaeologist Dorothy Ruskin and the provenance of a letter she has found, dated about A.D. 70 and written by someone calling herself Mariam the Apostle to her sister in Magdala. The combination of such broader topics as the Magdalen controversy and the complexities of British political and social investment in the Middle East in the early days of Zionism, combined with the standard Holmsian sleuthing and the continued development of the relationship between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes makes for a better than usual detective story.

The Moor is King's hommage to Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles, and is very well done indeed, giving the reader a much deeper grasp of what life on the moors is really like, through the introduction of the real antiquarian scholar and folklorist Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould as a key character in the novel.

The following novel in the series, O Jerusalem, moves back in time to before the marriage of Holmes and Russell, and returns to earlier themes, continuing to explore issues surrounding the British rule in the Middle East as Russell and Holmes travel to Palestine at the request of that greatest of all directors of intelligence services, Mycroft.

Justice Hall finds the pair of consulting detectives back in England, but reunites them with key characters from the previous novel, while giving the reader a fine example of the English country manor murder mystery, with extra Gothic touches.

The last of the novels I've read to date, The Game, takes Russell and Holmes off to Rudyard Kipling's India at the behest of brother Mycroft, to seek for none other than missing English agent Kimball O'Hara. Travelling incognito with a curiously clever and competent young street boy named Bindi, our intrepid detectives soon find themselves caught up in the whims of an eccentric maharajah and the threat of a Communist invasion through the northern passes.

I'm not sure if any of the novels really stand up to the first, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, for sheer delight in characterisation and plot, but they continue to be entertaining and, to my mind, worth reading.