Intelligent, complex and richly imagined, A Letter of Mary is the third in the award-winning Laurie King series chronicling the unlikely partnership between the misogynistic Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell, the young woman he takes on as his apprentice. August, 1923. The quiet in the Holmes household in Sussex is shaken when Dorothy Ruskin, an amateur archaeologist from the Holy Land, appears with an exquisite inlaid box containing a scrap of ancient writing. Miss Ruskin soon dies in a traffic accident that Holmes and Mary prove was murder. But what was the motivation? Was it the little inlaid box holding the manuscript? Or the woman's involvement in the volatile politics of the Holy Land? Or could it have been the manuscript itself - a letter seemingly written by Mary Magdalene that contains a biblical bombshell. Beautifully written and steeped in authentic period detail, A Letter of Mary is a fascinating and intelligent read.
I have become of a fan of the Mary Russell series. I like the quick read and the solid mystery that doesn't piss me off at the end. Through King's characters, especially Mary, the reader is taken through each step of the process of solving crimes. It's quite fun to watch Holmes interact with mary and the relationship that has developed over the course of 3 books now. I look forward to reading many more novels.
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19 February, 2011:
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19 February, 2011:
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