When I find a writer I like, I read nearly everything they’ve written from beginning to end. And this series about Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes continues to deliver. Author Laurie King’s debut novel of this series ~ THE BEEKEEPER’S APPRENTICE ~ was absolutely marvelous. As I said to my husband recently (when trying to explain this piece of fan fiction for him), who would ever imagine Sherlock Holmes having a wife?? But somehow, Laurie King makes it work. It is totally convincing that an unconventional man such as Holmes should pick a woman who is as brilliant and unconventional as himself.
And so we have the spunky and adventurous Mary Russell embarking on a breath-taking adventure with her husband. But what makes this book so special is the historical research that Ms King did for this novel. For she has caught the post World War I period to a “t.”
Because so many millions of families in Britain lost their young men, because there was so much grief, it is not surprising, I suppose, that various charlatans and con artists came out of the shadows to promote various religious cults. The leader of these cults was almost always male, and his followers were largely female. He called himself a number of names, including “The Master.” And so it is in THE LANGUAGE OF BEES, where the whole plot revolves around a cult that was into human sacrifice, run by a man (with various names), whom his followers called “The Master.”
My family happens to have personal experience of this because, like Yolande Adler in THE LANGUAGE OF BEES, my paternal grandmother was into fashionable religions. She was a fan of Baba, whom his followers called—you guessed it—The Master. Baba never actually spoke, but that did not prevent him from living life in the fast lane. His female groupies (who included my grandmother) could not do enough for him. When he visited London in around 1932, he was treated to English hospitality, with his admirers bankrolling his accommodation, his meals, and anything else he desired. When he expressed a wish of visiting Portofino in Italy (which even in the early thirties was very posh), it was no problem. He was put up in the best hotel, his train tickets were paid for, his every need was seen to. My grandmother followed him all the way to Santa Margherita, but as she didn’t have much money, it didn’t take her long before she ran out of cash and had to return home.
The reason for telling you all this, is to underscore just how much reserach Ms King did for this novel, and how this whole tale of the cultish leader and his slavish devotees rang so true for me.
As usual, Mary Russell shines in this novel. Like most readers, I loved the descriptions of her terrifying flights aboard an aeroplane. In 1924, things were not yet set up for commercial travel, and if you wanted to get to a remote place such as the Orkney Islands off Scotland in a hurry, you would still have to slog through a lengthy and exhausting journey of several trains and ferries. But Mycroft Holmes—Sherlock’s older brother—knows everyone and pulls strings to get Mary on a flight there. But, as it is 1924, we don’t have just one flight, we have several. After all, they have to refuel in various places such as York and Edinburgh (and Thurso in the Scottish Highlands), before eventually arriving in Orkney. Of course, various things go wrong with the aeroplane. Of course there is a hurricane. But Mary somehow manages to survive.
If you really want a flavor of England in the 1920s, and of the consequences that a truly horrific war wrought on the English people, you could do worse that read this novel.
