Editorial Content for The Murder of Mary Russell: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Laurie R. King was riffing on Sherlock Holmes before it was cool to do so. These days, with the popularity of television shows like “Sherlock” and “Elementary,” it can be easy to forget that King was putting her own spin on the Holmes stories more than 20 years ago. Her Holmes is an aging detective, paired with his much younger wife, Mary Russell, who complements his talents with her own investigative skills. The series has moved forwards and backwards in time, often seeing Russell and Holmes solving crimes in exotic locales (such as Japan in their previous adventure, DREAMING SPIES). Now, in THE MURDER OF MARY RUSSELL, it’s 1925, and the couple has returned to their home in rural Sussex. But as the title suggests, it’s anything but peaceful there.
The novel opens with Russell opening her home, reluctantly, to a strange man. At first she takes him for a slick door-to-door salesman, but the more he talks, the more her misgivings grow…until she turns around to offer the man some tea and finds herself looking down the barrel of his loaded gun.
"With THE MURDER OF MARY RUSSELL, King demonstrates once again that, at least under her pen, the possibilities for skillful Sherlock spinoffs are virtually limitless."
Just when the reader is convinced that things are about to take a dire turn for Russell, King pulls away to focus on another unsung heroine. She takes us back decades earlier, to the birth and young adulthood of the woman who’s now known as Mrs. Hudson, familiar to fans of the Holmes stories as Holmes’ landlady and (in King’s version) his housekeeper in Sussex. It turns out, though, that Mrs. Hudson has quite a storied (and sordid) history of her own, a history that is about to catch up to the present in Russell’s Sussex kitchen in 1925.
The narrative intersperses the account of the early life of Clarissa Hudson with present-day vignettes, as Holmes and Mrs. Hudson (not to mention Inspector Lestrade) confront some pretty gruesome evidence that leaves Holmes, at least, simultaneously bewildered, terrified and determined as he tries to get to the bottom of what happened to Russell…and how it’s connected to a secret dating back to before she was even born.
With THE MURDER OF MARY RUSSELL, King demonstrates once again that, at least under her pen, the possibilities for skillful Sherlock spinoffs are virtually limitless. This one offers a legitimately compelling insight into a minor character who easily could have been overlooked entirely. In doing so, she not only broadens the Holmesian landscape, she also continues her delightfully feminist project of writing women into the original Holmes narratives. Her latest novel is also a response to a specific Arthur Conan Doyle story, “The Adventure of the Gloria Scott,” which may send readers to look at that original tale with fresh eyes, or indeed for the first time.
Teaser
Mary Russell is used to dark secrets --- her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond. And what of the other person to whom Russell has opened her heart: the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell’s faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s son. What Samuel Hudson tells Russell cannot possibly be true, yet she believes him --- as surely as she believes the threat of the gun in his hand. In a devastating instant, everything changes.
Promo
Mary Russell is used to dark secrets --- her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond. And what of the other person to whom Russell has opened her heart: the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell’s faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s son. What Samuel Hudson tells Russell cannot possibly be true, yet she believes him --- as surely as she believes the threat of the gun in his hand. In a devastating instant, everything changes.
About the Book
Laurie R. King’s bestselling Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series weaves rich historical detail and provocative themes with intriguing characters and enthralling suspense. Russell and Holmes have become one of modern literature’s most beloved teams. But does this adventure end it all?
Mary Russell is used to dark secrets --- her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond.
And what of the other person to whom Mary Russell has opened her heart: the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell’s faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s son.
What Samuel Hudson tells Russell cannot possibly be true, yet she believes him --- as surely as she believes the threat of the gun in his hand. In a devastating instant, everything changes. And when the scene is discovered --- a pool of blood on the floor, the smell of gunpowder in the air --- the most shocking revelation of all is that the grim clues point directly to Clara Hudson.
Or rather to Clarissa, the woman she was before Baker Street.
The key to Russell’s sacrifice lies in Mrs. Hudson’s past. To uncover the truth, a frantic Sherlock Holmes must put aside his anguish and push deep into his housekeeper’s secrets --- to a time before her disguise was assumed, before her crimes were buried away.
There is death here, and murder, and trust betrayed.
And nothing will ever be the same.
Audiobook available, narrated by Jenny Sterlin and Susan Lyons
