66. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, or On the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie R. King (Historical mystery) 405 p.

I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defence I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915. (5)

And so begins one of the most magical books I’ve ever encountered. I was eleven or twelve when my mother first put a copy of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice into my hands. Although we both liked mystery novels, we didn’t really share the same taste, so I knew that anything she thought I’d like was sure to be something special.

At the time, I’d never read any Sherlock Holmes pastiches, so my immediate instinct, on encountering him in a story not written by Conan Doyle, was not to run screaming from the room. A lucky chance, because The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is not like any other Holmes story. For a start, it isn’t really about Holmes at all.

The narrator and protagonist is one Mary Russell, a young Jewish-American feminist who, after the death of her family, is placed in the guardianship of her aunt, and goes to live with her on the Sussex Downs. A chance meeting with Holmes leads to a kind of informal apprenticeship when the great detective realizes that here, at last, is someone with an intellect to match his own.

Although ostensibly retired, Holmes is far from abandoning cases altogether. When Mrs. Barker, a neighbour, brings Holmes a problem, Russell gets her first chance to see her mentor in action, and manages a few deductions of her own. The case is classic Holmes, with government secrets and mysterious poisonings.

Russell’s next case is far humbler; as she herself remarks, the theft of “thirty guineas and four hams, even in those days of chronic food shortages, were hardly the stuff of Times headlines” (103). Despite the affair’s relative unimportance, she acquits herself with credit, and it isn’t long before a genuinely noteworthy case comes along. The six-year-old daughter of an American senator is kidnapped for ransom, and although her parents are willing and able (barely) to meet the kidnappers’ demands, what guarantee do they have that she will be returned alive once the ransom is paid?

That case, although critical in itself, is also a turning point for Holmes and Russell’s partnership. It gives both Russell and Holmes and new confidence in Russell’s judgement and abilities—something they desperately need when it is revealed that Holmes has a new and deadly foe.

I’ve re-read this book a dozen times or more, and I’ve always found something new to enjoy about it. It’s one of those few, perfect books to which I would unhesitatingly award a rating of 10/10, or would automatically place at the top of my list of favourites in its genre. Mary Russell’s voice is unique, and Laurie R. King uses her pitch-perfect ear for dialect and vocabulary to make her sound like a WWI-era Oxbridge intellectual. And I know I’m not the only reader who has been completely charmed by the English settings of the book, particularly King’s descriptions of Oxford. She has a real gift for making a place come vividly to life with history and atmosphere.

There’s so much more I could say about this book, but I’ll confine myself to this: I have rarely enjoyed any book as much as this one, there is no mystery novel I like better, and if you haven’t read this yet, you’re missing something special.

I’m going to be re-reading all eight Mary Russell novels this year, in preparation for the release of the ninth, The Language of Bees, in 2009.

Pages read: 18,973

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Decades Challenge 2008, Laurie R. King, Mary Russell