The Language of Bees

Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Staff Picks , Fiction

Oh, goody is my reaction when I see there is a new Mary Russell novel by Laurie R. King.

If you don’t know, King is writing a continuation of the Sherlock Holmes canon from the point of view of Holmes’ much younger, half-American, Jewish wife.  And in The Language of Bees, she gives Holmes a son and a granddaughter, too.

Unlikely?  Yes, but marvelously clever. Mary Russell (who met the elderly beekeeper when she was a rebellious, grieving teenager in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice) is a match for her famous husband, a scholar and adventurer willing to research obscure languages, don disguises to roam London’s streets, or catch a fast camel or motorcar on a jaunt around the world.

Just back from a long international journey, Mary and Holmes are approached by the son of Irene Adler. A bohemian painter, an injured World War I vet, and the embittered child of that extraordinary woman, he is reluctant to acknowledge his famous father.

But he needs help.

Damien Adler’s wife, whom he met in a Shanghai brothel, and his beloved small daughter are missing.  Yolanda has disappeared before, but that was on more familiar ground.  They have been in London for only a few months, and he is deeply uneasy at her absence.

Holmes and Russell trace Yolanda’s involvement in a religious cult, which may be responsible for a string of ritual killings at various druidical and sacred sites throughout Britain.  Then Damien disappears, too. Is this brilliant and damaged young man on the side of the angels or of the devil worshippers?

It’s all too, too enjoyable.  Start at the beginning if you haven’t read the series.  (In among the Sherlockian pleasures of the earlier works, you’ll find a perfectly dandy Lord Peter Wimsey scene, too, in I forget which volume.)

This is an homage done right, a thoroughly masterful work by a mistress of the genre.