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The Murder of Mary Russell: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Kindle Edition

by Laurie R. King (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 3,182 ratings

Book 14 of 18: Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Laurie R. King’s 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.

Praise for The Murder of Mary Russell

“Leaping narrative energy has always been a hallmark of this series, and it reaches something of a peak in this latest volume. . . . The lean momentum of the story never falters. . . . It’s a stunning prolonged feat of storytelling, and it succeeds in making The Murder of Mary Russell the best installment so far in an excellent series.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“[A] sharp, inventive and rewarding series.”—The Seattle Times

“Delightful . . . a triumph of plotting . . . Fans, always hungry to know more personal details about King’s iteration of Sherlock Holmes and his world, will get a few more delicious tidbits this time around.”—Booklist (starred review)

Book 14 of 18

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
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April 5, 2016
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for The Murder of Mary Russell

“Leaping narrative energy has always been a hallmark of this series, and it reaches something of a peak in this latest volume. . . . The lean momentum of the story never falters. . . . It’s a stunning prolonged feat of storytelling, and it succeeds in making The Murder of Mary Russell the best installment so far in an excellent series.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“[A] sharp, inventive and rewarding series.”—The Seattle Times

“Delightful . . . a triumph of plotting . . . Fans, always hungry to know more personal details about [Laurie R.] King’s iteration of Sherlock Holmes and his world, will get a few more delicious tidbits this time around.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Not only a high point in King’s long-running series, but a compelling demonstration of the ways inventive writers can continue to breathe new life into the Holmes-ian mythology . . . Both Holmes and Russell will have a chance to shine; in fact, the case achieves a rare balance between Holmes, Russell, and the mystery they’ve been set.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Whip-smart, suspenseful and intricately plotted, The Murder of Mary Russell shines a brilliant light on an often overlooked aspect of the Sherlock Holmes universe.”—Shelf Awareness

“A tantalizing tale of deception and misdirection for [Laurie R. King’s] readers’ delight.”—LibraryReads (Top Ten Pick)

Praise for the award-winning novels of Laurie R. King

“The great marvel of King’s series is that she’s managed to preserve the integrity of Holmes’s character and yet somehow conjure up a woman astute, edgy, and compelling enough to be the partner of his mind as well as his heart.”—The Washington Post Book World

“The most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”—Lee Child

“A lively adventure in the very best of intellectual company.”—The New York Times

“Erudite, fascinating . . . by all odds the most successful re-creation of the famous inhabitant of 221B Baker Street ever attempted.”—Houston Chronicle

“Intricate clockworks, wheels within wheels.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Imaginative and subtle.”—The Seattle Times

“Impossible to put down.”—Romantic Times

“Remarkably beguiling.”—The Boston Globe

About the Author

Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes stories. She has been nominated for a multitude of prizes, and her fiction has won the Edgar, Creasy, Nero, and Macavity awards. She has been guest of honor at several crime conventions, and she was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 2010.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

9:15 a.m.

Irony comes in many flavours, sweet to bitter. The harshest irony I ever tasted was this: when I was interrupted that spring morning, I felt only relief.

But then, tyres on wet gravel sound nothing like the crack of doom.

The noise caught me in the midst of an attack on the post overflowing my desk in Sussex. Since dawn, I’d been elbow-deep in five months’ worth of pleas, adverts, requests for information now out of date, proposals of joint ventures similarly belated, legal and scholarly papers in need of review, and a thin handful of actual letters from friends near and far. I wanted nothing more than to haul the lot outside and set a match to it.

When I heard the noise, I assumed it was Mrs Hudson, returning for some forgotten element of her morning’s trip to Eastbourne. However, the tyres sounded more tentative than Patrick’s hand on the wheel (Patrick Mason was my farm manager and our housekeeper’s occasional driver). Nor did the approaching engine sound familiar. A taxi bringing Holmes, perhaps, finished with his unspecified tasks for his brother, Mycroft? I hadn’t seen my husband since he’d left Oxford, two weeks before.

But a glance through the library window showed an unfamiliar car with London number plates and a solitary figure considerably smaller than Sherlock Holmes. The driver circled counter-clockwise, coming to a halt before the house.

I headed to the door with a light heart: unarguable proof that Mary Russell had no talent for reading the future.

I stepped from the front door into the roofed portico beyond, stopping as the fickle morning sunshine gave way to another quick shower. The driver’s door opened, but he hesitated, seeing not just the rain, but me. He’d expected someone else.

“May I help you?” I called.

“Er, the Holmeses?”

“This is the place,” I confirmed. The shower grew stronger, spattering down the drive, and although the day was warm enough, I had no wish to change out of wet clothes. I turned to rummage through the odd population of canes, sticks, and tools in the corner of the entryway, but before I could locate an umbrella that functioned, the car door slammed and footsteps hurried across the stones. I let go the handle and gave the visitor some room under the shelter.

He was a short, stocky man in his forties, wearing a new black overcoat, an old brown suit, and a cloth driving cap that he now pulled off, snapping it clear of drops before arranging it back over his blond hair. His brief question had been insufficient to betray an accent, but it had to be either Australian or South African—his pale blue eyes positively blazed out of sun-darkened skin, and his suit had a distinctly colonial air to it. I had just chosen Australia when his greeting confirmed it.

“G’day, Ma’am. Nice place you got here.”

With that greeting, I finally raised a mental eyebrow.

A person’s first words can reveal a great deal more than the speaker’s origins. The closer one sticks to the traditional forms—Good day, Madam, terribly sorry to bother you but . . . or a chatty variation such as, Dreadful weather for May, Ma’am, please don’t come any further into it, I just . . . —the smoother the transition into a stranger’s life. But Nice place you got here, coupled with a blithe spattering of drops across the entry tiles and a grin that showed too many teeth? The man was out to sell me something.

Had I actually been working that morning—had I not been so grateful for any interruption at all—I might simply have taken another step back and shut the door in his face. Might not even have gone out at all, for that matter, thus setting events off in a very different direction. But with nothing more compelling than a stack of mail to draw me, that self-assured grin made for a nice little challenge.

Wouldn’t one think that life with Sherlock Holmes would have taught me all about the perils of boredom? And overconfidence? But like a fool, I felt only relief at this holiday from envelopes. “My husband is not here at the moment.”

Another young woman might have said those words apologetically, or perhaps nervously. I merely stated them as fact. He gave me a quick glance, head to toe, taking in my short but decidedly unfashionable haircut, my complete lack of makeup, the old shirt I wore (one of Holmes’ with its sleeves rolled up), and the trousers on my legs. He reacted with a degree more sensitivity than I might have expected. His posture subsided, his bare grin gave way to something more polite, and he removed his hat again, this time a gesture of respect rather than convenience. Even his words reflected the change.

“Sorry, Ma’am, but it’s not him I’m looking for. I wonder . . . does Mrs Hudson live here? Mrs Clari—Clara Hudson?”

“She does, but—”

His right hand shot out at me. “Then you must be the missus. Mary Russell? You look just like she described you!”

I stifled my arm’s automatic impulse—to catch that outstretched hand and whirl him against the wall—and instead permitted him to grab me and pump away, grinning into my face. Still a salesman.

After four shakes I took back my hand. “Sir,” I began.

“Is she here? My mother?”

If he’d squatted down to tip me head over heels, he could not have astonished me more. Mother??

He saw my reaction, and gave a sort of smacking-of-the-forehead gesture. “What am I thinking? Guess I’m a little excited. My name is Samuel—Samuel Hudson. Great ta meetcha,” and the hand came out again to seize mine.

Mother?

Of all the mysteries that are love, maternal love may be the most basic. My own mother had died when I was fourteen. A few months later, with the raw instincts of a barnyard chick imprinting its affections on the first available surrogate, my bereft heart had claimed Mrs Hudson for its own. I had known her for ten years now, lived with her for more than four, and she was as close to a mother as I would ever again have.

I knew of course that she had a son in Australia—or rather, she had a “nephew” whom her sister claimed as her own. Glimpses of an older person’s complex and unspoken history can be startling, even when one’s main source of comparison is a dedicated Bohemian like Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps especially in that case: Mrs Hudson had always been a point of solid dependability amidst the anarchy that surrounded Holmes.

Motherhood is more than a biological state. Yes, I knew—well, suspected—about her past, but I had never conducted the close investigation I might have with a stranger, and definitely never asked Holmes if Mrs Hudson had been married before giving over the child to be raised. I admit that a few weeks into our acquaintance, when it dawned on me that the nephew might in fact be a son, my first reaction was an adolescent giggle over the idea of Mrs Hudson as a fallen woman. My second reaction was curiosity. Oddly, Holmes refused to say anything about the matter. It took a while before I realised that his blatant unconcern was the only way he could grant his poor housekeeper (as if she wasn’t so much more than housekeeper!) some degree of privacy.

Once I saw this, I followed his lead. I made no further attempts to rifle her possessions or read the letters from Australia—written largely by her sister (who had died, some nine months before this) although Mrs Hudson’s interest clearly lay more in the news about their shared son. To judge by the sighs and a general air of distraction after each letter’s arrival, it was not an easy relationship. In fact, her “nephew” seemed to be something of a ne’er do well, but since she never asked for assistance or advice, we could only politely ignore her unspoken woes.

Until now, when he stood on our doorstep.

Assuming this was Samuel Hudson.

Would most young women accept such a claim without question? Perhaps. And perhaps most young women would be justified in their naïve acceptance. However, I was married to Sherlock Holmes, had known him only a few hours longer than I’d known Mrs Hudson, and the basic fact of life with Holmes was: the world is filled with enemies.

So, I would not permit this person to meet Mrs Hudson without a thorough vetting.

All of this reflection and decision took me approximately three of the fellow’s hand-pumps. I bared my teeth to make a grin at least the equal of his, and drew back to welcome him inside (which had the added benefit of removing my hand from his).

“She’s away for the morning,” I told him, “I’m not sure exactly when she’ll be back. However, I can probably manage to make you a cup of tea in her absence. Unless you’d rather have coffee?”

“A cuppa would go down a treat,” he said, then to clarify: “Tea, thanks.”

I closed the door against the cool air and led him into the main room, our idiosyncratic combination of sitting room, library, and dining room. The south wall, to my right, had a table in the bay window, where we took our meals; the east wall held laden bookshelves, and French doors to the terrace; on the north lay a wide fireplace with chairs and a settee, along with the entrance to the kitchen. Holmes’ observation beehive, set into the wall beside the bay window, was behind its cover.

“Whadda great room,” the visitor enthused.

I bit off my tart response—I’m sorry, it’s not for sale—and instead turned the topic onto a more pertinent track. “Not to be rude, but I don’t suppose you have any sort of identification? You don’t look much like her.” Mrs Hudson’s grey hair had once been brown, not blonde, and her dark eyes were nothing like this man’s bright blue. Even if the fellow had been born “Samuel Hudson,” it was a common enough surname. He might be some lunatic with a Sherlock Holmes mania built around a minor coincidence.

If so, this would not be the first fantasist to waltz into our lives, although the odds were mounting in his favour: he was certainly from Australia, and he knew not only our names, but where we lived. Still, the thought of that hand clamping down over Mrs Hudson’s beloved palm . . .

(I recount these details to show that I was not entirely oblivious to the world around me. Just not attentive enough.)

“Nah, guess I don’t,” he said, running a hand over his visage. “That’s probably why I never doubted who my mother was—Mum and I both have my granddad’s looks, or so I’m told. Identification, is it? I didn’t bring my passport, didn’t expect—ah, what about these?” His fingers came out of an inner pocket with a photograph and a golden chain. He handed me the first.

It showed two women and an infant. The women sat in the formal pose required of a slow shutter speed, although it had been taken in a garden, not a studio—a private garden, most likely, since neither wore a hat. The infant was as unformed as any small human, little more than pale hair and layers of cloth. The woman holding him was blonde, with light-coloured eyes, and I thought—as I had from the first time I’d seen this photograph, years before—that there was something odd about the way the woman’s hands clutched the baby, thrusting him at the camera rather than cuddling him to her. Her features, too, had some faint air of hidden meaning, a triumph almost, that made one very aware of the empty hands of the woman at her side.

The other woman, taller, straight of back and dark of hair and eye, looked into the camera with a gaze of sad acceptance. Even if I had not recognised this woman’s features, I would have known her by that expression: I see what you are up to, it said, but I love you anyway.

Heaven knows she’d had plenty of opportunities to look at me that way, over the years.

I handed the photograph back to Samuel Hudson. “She has a copy of that.” I did not add, Hers is worn down to the paper from ten thousand touches of her finger. My mother had used that very gesture, on the mezuzah at our door.

“Well, that’s me,” he said. “With my mother and aunt—although until just a few months ago, I thought the two went the other way around.”

I glanced up sharply at the bitter edge in his voice, to see his other piece of evidence dangling from thumb and forefinger: a gold chain strung through a hole drilled in an old half sovereign coin.

“Does she still wear hers?” he asked.

The chain looked too bright and the gold of the pendant less worn than I remembered, but the necklace definitely caught my attention. I’d never seen it around Mrs Hudson’s neck, but I recognised it as the flash of gold I’d first spotted years before, tucked in the bottom of her incongruously large and ornate jewellery box. I might have taken no notice, at the time, but for the casual haste with which she had flipped something over it.

“No, she doesn’t wear one like that,” I told him.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00UEL0KV4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bantam (April 5, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 5, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5197 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 367 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #104,942 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #929 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- #1,049 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- #2,148 in Psychological Thrillers (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 3,182 ratings

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Laurie R. King

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New York Times bestselling crime writer Laurie R. King writes both series and standalone novels. For a complete list of her books in order, please visit http://www.laurierking.com/books/complete-book-list

In the Mary Russell series (first entry: The Beekeeper's Apprentice), fifteen-year-old Russell meets Sherlock Holmes on the Sussex Downs in 1915, becoming his apprentice, then his partner. The series follows their amiably contentious partnership into the 1920s as they challenge each other to ever greater feats of detection. For a complete list of the Mary Russell books in order, click here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CJLA42C/kindle/ref=sr_bookseries_null_B00CJLA42C.

The Kate Martinelli series, starting with A Grave Talent, concerns a San Francisco homicide inspector, her SFPD partner, and her life partner. In the course of the series, Kate encounters a female Rembrandt, a modern-day Holy Fool, two difficult teenagers, a manifestation of the goddess Kali and an eighty-year-old manuscript concerning Sherlock Holmes.

The Stuyvesant and Gray books feature Harris Stuyvesant, a Bureau of Investigation agent who finds himself far out of his depth, first in England during the 1926 General Strike (Touchstone), then in Paris during the sweltering confusion of September, 1929 (The Bones of Paris).

King also has written stand-alone novels--A Darker Place as well as two loosely linked novels, Folly and Keeping Watch--and a science fiction novel, Califia's Daughters, under the pseudonym Leigh Richards.

King grew up reading her way through libraries like a termite through balsa before going on to become a mother, builder, world traveler, and theologian.

She has now settled into a genteel life of crime, back in her native northern California. She has a secondary residence in cyberspace, where she enjoys meeting readers in her Virtual Book Club and on her blog.

King has won the Edgar and Creasey awards (for A Grave Talent), the Nero (for A Monstrous Regiment of Women) and the MacCavity (for Folly); her nominations include the Agatha, the Orange, the Barry, and two more Edgars. She was also given an honorary doctorate from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

Check out King's website, http://laurierking.com/, and follow the links to her blog and Virtual Book Club, featuring monthly discussions of her work, with regular visits from the author herself. And for regular LRK updates, follow the link to sign up for her email newsletter.

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Pat. H

Another great mystery from Laurie R. King

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2016

Verified Purchase

I loved this book. I am not a great fan of stories that change the characters of the Sherlock Holmes canon and make them into different characters so when I read this story would have Mrs. Hudson as one of the main characters I was doubtful. I have read almost all of the Laurie R. King "Mary Russell" stories and have enjoyed all of them so I was ready to set aside my doubts and see what Ms. King would do with this one. And I am happy to say it is great.
While Mrs. Hudson is in town doing her weekly shopping a stranger shows up at the Russell home on the downs. Mary has been waiting for Holmes to return from a business trip and even though she realizes the car doesn't sound like the one Holmes drives she opens the door. She soon regrets that as the creepy man she has admitted to the house is giving her some bad vibes. He acts like a smarmy used car salesman, smiles too much, starts to look over her house like he is a real estate agent pricing it for sale. But it is too late to get rid of him so Mary prepares to defend herself if needed. All she has is a 3" knife strapped to her ankle and suddenly she finds a gun pointing at her face.
Mrs. Hudson returns from town and starts unloading her shopping and has a feeling something isn't quite right. She starts looking around and realizes she smells gun shot residue, then she finds huge puddles of blood on the living room floor. And Mary is missing. Mrs. Hudson does what she is supposed to do; she calls the police and tries to prevent the constables from destroying the crime scene clues, but it is hopeless. The constables walk all over the house and out of their own kindness start to clean up the bloody footprints. When Sherlock finally gets home there are very few clues for him to examine. One thing that draws his attention is a golden chain with a golden coin hanging on it that has been left on the mantle. It is almost identical to one he had seen on Mrs. Hudson when he first met her some 46 years ago.
Through flash backs we learn of Mrs. Hudson's history. She isn't just the saintly old lady she appears to be. In fact she has a dark history that has been kept secret since she started working for Holmes long ago. The reader has to understand her history to discover who the possible killer is.
Reading about Mrs. Hudson's past was great. Even though it is not a pleasant story it is fascinating to see her overcome all the challenges she faced. With Holmes' help she came out a winner in spite off all the people who tried to use her for their own benefit. But now her past has brought death to their door, Mary is gone, Sherlock is spinning his wheels, and deadly secrets are going to be brought to light. Who was the real target? Are old enemies out to get Sherlock? Was it Mrs. Hudson who was supposed to die? Who had a coin necklace like hers? Why was it left behind? Who bled out in the living room? And where the heck is Mary????

This series of books is a little pricier than most books I read. I tend to shop all the "free" Kindle books, and search for special deals. The Mary Russell books are the only ones I would pay the full publisher's price for because I know they will always have a good story. They are professionally edited, no typos, good grammar, clean, no foul language, no sex just to sell a book, only a great mystery story that entertains. In this book I think I may have found one typo; "many" was used once when I think they meant "money" but I may have read it wrong. Definitely a 5 star book.

5 people found this helpful

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Brittany

Wow!

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2016

Verified Purchase

Well, she did it again. Another great book in this series! As always, it sucked me in and I had to stay up until 6am to finish it. Completely worth it.

I won't say too much about the plot because I don't like ruining it for people who haven't read it yet. I will say this book is different than the rest of the series. For one thing, for a book that has Mary Russell in the title, we see very little of her. Instead, this book goes back in time to Mrs. Hudson's mother and then we follow Mrs. Hudson's life from birth to old age. It was a fascinating story and I loved it.

For all that I loved this book, there were a couple things that rang false to me. For one, Mary's decision following a stressful event seemed dumb (not like her) and it felt like it was just there to push the story. I also think there should have been more of an explanation on why Mrs. Hudson chose to work for Holmes.

The ending left me unsettled even as it made me laugh. Oh Mrs. Hudson, who would have guessed?

I have a hard time picturing the next book. There will definitely be something missing.

6 people found this helpful

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lisaleo (Lisa Yount)

Wonderful character study

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2016

Verified Purchase

I’ve always enjoyed Laurie King’s Sherlock Holmes-Mary Russell stories, but I hadn’t read any for a while because they’d seemed to be too tangled up in early-20th-century Middle Eastern politics. (An exception was Pirate King, the one centered on Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, which was a delightful romp.) I was intrigued, however, by the description saying that this one focused on Holmes’s landlady/housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, about whom I knew little. (I should add that I am by no means a heavy-duty Sherlockian; I read most of the original stories long ago, and some pastiches, including King’s, since then, but that’s it.)

Although, as the title suggests, Mary is in peril from early on, Clara—or Clarissa, as she was originally, according to this story—Hudson definitely takes over the story. King does a fantastic job of developing her as a character and inventing a complex backstory for her, including detailed descriptions of her parents, her sister, her early life, and how she became involved with Holmes. The writing is wonderfully detailed. For instance, here is a description of the doll that Clarissa’s mother, Sally, received from her husband, Timmy Hudson, around the time of Clarissa’s birth, sent from a ship going to Australia on which Timmy was working as a sailor:

“He’d made a dolly longer than her hand, with stubby extremities and a knob for a head, stuffed firm with kapok. Tens of thousands of tight little knots had gone into its making, and a great deal of thought…. She ran her fingers over the little figure’s taut waxed-linen surface, feeling her husband’s hands on every tiny bump. How many hours had this taken him? What had been going on all around him while he worked, what conversations, what kinds of men at his side? Holding it to her face, she could smell the sea and the smouldering lamps, and the tobacco the others had smoked while he worked. She could smell his life, far away.”

The suspense is considerable, the mystery intriguing, and both Mary and Sherlock certainly play their parts—but the story comes alive with special vividness whenever Mrs. Hudson is on stage, which fortunately is most of the time. I would recommend this book, not only to fans of King’s series or of Holmes pastiches in general, but to anyone who wants to read a fascinating character study.

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Shepherd Haven

Will be reading more by this author, Laurie R. King

Reviewed in Canada on November 28, 2016

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Enjoyable story and well-paced with twist and turns. At first I had trouble with what I thought was “artistic license” since the some of the characters involved in this story were Sherlock Holmes and his housekeeper Mrs. Watson as written by Arthur Conan Doyle's in his original stories.). In this novel Sherlock Holmes is retired and married to a much younger woman, Mary Russel. That was hard to wrap my mind about at first since I can still recall a passage in Doyle’s book “Sign of Four” where Sherlock Holmes states: “But love is an emotional thing and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgement.” However then I realized that these are just fictional characters after all and there have been and will be many more Sherlock Holmes adaptations (some good and some not). The main story line in this particular book is about Mrs. Watson and her “mysterious past” and how she became an employee/or confident in Sherlock life. We find out that Mrs. Watson is not the nice old lady as we may have been lead to believe and is not even a Mrs. and she is closer in age to Sherlock than we might have been lead to believe. Mary Russel, Sherlock’s young wife, treats Mrs. Watson like a mother figure but always suspected she had a secrets. Like Sherlock, Mary has very good deductive powers. The story just back and forth to the “present” and the “past” and chapters are told in a “first person” perceptive by Mary, Mrs. Watson and Sherlock. The story starts out with Mrs. Watson’s middle age son paying his first visit to his mother but finds Mary home alone. When Mrs. Watson returns home she finds pools of blood and no Mary. At this time Sherlock is off on one his other adventures and seems more upset not at Mary’s disappearance but that the police disturbed the crime scene before he gets home. The story takes us to flashbacks of Mrs. Watson life which will lead up to current situation. But where is Mary…has she been kidnapped or is she dead? Mrs. Hudson's past comes back to haunt not only her but Mary and Sherlock too. What is the motive behind Mrs. Watson’s son’s search and what is he actually looking for? Is his mother a murderer? What about his father and his grandfather? You will have to read the book.

From some research in regard to the author Laurie R. King, she has written several of the Mary Russel and Holmes stories and I from reading this one I will now want to check out more of them. The Mary Russel theme is that she meets the retired Sherlock Holmes in 1915 and becomes his apprentice and late his wife and they have an amiable discord, challenging each other to see who can better the art of detection. Looking forward to other Laurie R. King books.

This book is highly recommended.

Barbara

A different perspective ... Mrs. Hudson

Reviewed in Germany on October 16, 2016

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I absolutely adore all "Mary Russel" books by Laurie R. King and this one is no exception. Reading the title I was extremely worried that this would be the end of the series, which I'm very thankful it's not.
The book tells us the history of Mrs. Hudson, in a very entertaining, sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing way. I always suspected Mrs. Hudson to be more than "just" a housekeeper, but I could have NEVER guessed her background to be so action-filled!
I managed to devour this book in about 6 hours, just about inhaling the story. I'm very much looking forward to reading it again, a little more slowly, to discover a lot more wonderful details I missed in my first go.
A word of caution though: although this book offers the life story of Mrs. Hudson, there are Mary and Holmes elements in it you won't be able to appreciate if this is your first contact with the Mary Russel series. I highly recommend reading the entire series, starting with "The Beekeeper's Apprentice".

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susan

Very surprised at some of the events & a great ending. Once again I felt that Homes & ...

Reviewed in Canada on April 18, 2016

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Right up there at the top of my list for the Mary Russel series. Incrediable detail - history, fashion & life style of the l800's & up.

Very surprised at some of the events & a great ending.

Once again I felt that Homes & Russell actually were real people. I was transported back in time. Thamk you Laurie King.

Ken Best

Great Read

Reviewed in Canada on June 15, 2016

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This is the fourth book of the series I've read. King has fleshed out great characters and spun an intriguing plot. This is all you ever wanted to know about Mrs Hudson, and more.

Kerrdelune

A Fine Adventure

Reviewed in Canada on May 3, 2016

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Always a great pleasure to hold another Holmes/Russell adventure in my hand, and this one did not disappoint.
I treasured it from the first page to the last and loved every word.

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