Riviera Gold: A Novel (Mary Russell Mystery, #16)

by Laurie R King

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn the Riviera upside down to crack their most captivating case yet in the New York Times bestselling series that Lee Child called “the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”

It’s summertime on the Riviera, and the Jazz Age has come to France’s once-sleepy beaches. From their music-filled terraces, American expatriates gaze along the coastline at the lights of Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and sometimes hidden away. When Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive, they find their partnership pulled between youthful pleasures and old sins, hot sun and cool jazz, new affections and enduring loyalties.

Russell falls into easy friendship with an enthralling American couple, Sara and Gerald Murphy, whose golden life on the Riviera has begun to attract famous writers and artists—and some of the scoundrels linked with Monte Carlo’s underworld. The Murphy set will go on to inspire everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Pablo Picasso, but in this summer of 1925, their importance for Russell lies in one of their circle’s recent additions: the Holmeses’ former housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, who hasn’t been seen since she fled England under a cloud of false murder accusations.

When a beautiful young man is found dead in Mrs. Hudson’s front room, she becomes the prime suspect in yet another murder. Russell is certain of Mrs. Hudson’s innocence; Holmes is not. But the old woman’s colorful past has been a source of tension between them before, and now the dangerous players who control Monte Carlo’s gilded casinos may stop at nothing to keep the pair away from what Mrs. Hudson’s youthful history could bring to light.

The Riviera is a place where treasure can be false, where love can destroy, and where life, as Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes will discover, can be cheap—even when it is made of solid gold.

• ISBN10: 0525620834
• ISBN13: 9780525620839
• Publish Date: 9 June 2020
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 3 October 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780525620839

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Riviera Gold is the 16th book in the Mary Russel/Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R. King. Released 9th June 2020 by Penguin Random House on their Ballantine imprint, it's 368 pages (print edition) and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This entry in the series is set in the Riviera in 1925. Mary Russel has accompanied a friend on a sailboat and winds up in Monte Carlo and is soon mixed up with arms smuggling, crime, murder, and the long shadow of Mrs. Hudson's past. Holmes does make a significant appearance later in the book.

I liked that the narrative is worked around a framework of actual historical events, people, and occurrences. The author is skilled enough that it's sometimes difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.

This is an enjoyable (but not quick) read. Fans of the series will find more of the same to like here. More rigorous fans of canonical Holmes will spend this book grinding their teeth. (Holmes and Mary Russel are married, she's the focus of the mysteries, and a lot of the action and the denouement stretch the bounds of suspension of disbelief to the limit). I did enjoy it a lot though. Highly recommended. Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.