Eleventh in King's series about Mary Russell, who… well, this is
basically Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, but against all the odds it
manages to work. Strange things have been happening around a film
crew; Russell joins it to work out what's going on.
The elephant in the room: yes, Mary Russell is something of a
Mary Sue, in that she's Holmes's intellectual and physical equal (and
wife). I continue to be surprised that King manages to pull this off;
it should be horribly self-indulgent, but instead it comes over as
genuine and convincing.
Earlier novels in this series have been grimly serious and with highly
complex plots, but this one is essentially farcical, and I was frankly
surprised by King's light touch (especially having also read a couple
of her Kate Martinelli series). It's not much of a mystery, since the
solutions are obvious nearly as soon as the questions arise, but as an
adventurous romp explicitly inspired by The Pirates of Penzance it
doesn't do badly at all. By many people's standards the start is very
slow, but King writes enjoyably and obviously wanted to squeeze in her
research into certain historical characters. And there's a fine
demonstration of the dramatic principle of Chekov's Piano.
You could probably read this one on its own, but it's not at all
characteristic of the series, so I wouldn't recommend that you start
here. Followed by Garment of Shadows.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.