Laurie R. King

Laurie R. King: Those Who Are Gone

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Raquel Laing #2

Those Who Are Gone is the follow-up to Laurie King’s excellent 2022 novel, Back to the Garden, one of my favorite books of that year. Her new effort is definitely a different animal, as she goes back to her roots with a complex police tale reminiscent of A Grave Talent, for which she won the 1993 Edgar for best first novel.

Equal to the modern master of the genre, Michael Connelly, this is a procedural with bells on. Main character Raquel Laing is a homicide cop still cleaning up a timeline which stretches back to King’s previous book, while at the same time trying to get a grip her own troubled and murky past.  She’s what we might recognize as neurodivergent, as many social cues elude her, but she’s compensated by developing the skill of reading micro expressions, allowing her to translate her interpretations into an out of the box solution to various mysteries, solutions which are quite often correct. Her glitches relating to other humans make her a challenge as a partner, and in this novel, she has a new one named Pam, who seems more interested in her Manolo Blahniks and boyfriend than her job. read more

Laurie R. King: Knave of Diamonds

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Mary Russell #19

At Damian Adler’s wedding Mary Russell thinks she sees a familiar figure in the crowd, someone who looks like her uncle Jake. But Jake is dead, isn’t he? She last saw her wayward uncle 14 years ago and only remembers that the charming rogue was cast out of the family shortly before her parents and brother were killed in an auto accident.

As Mary looks forward to recovering from their adventures in the previous two books, Mycroft Holmes summons his brother Sherlock to London. The case? A cold case involving the theft of the so-called Irish Crown Jewels 14 years before: a case Holmes could not solve, a theft that cost him the wrath of the Dublin police and the King. That 14 years is no coincidence and Holmes immediately recalls the unproveable involvement of Jake Russell in the theft. Should he tell Mary the truth about her beloved (and apparently dead) uncle? read more

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: 30 years of reading magic

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Every writer of historical mystery fiction writes in the shadow of Ellis Peters, whose first Brother Cadfael novel was published in 1975, and Elizabeth Peters, whose first Amelia Peabody novel was published the same year.  Elizabeth Peters, an incredibly influential figure, created not only the historical cozy-slash-adventure novel, she also foregrounded a woman as the central figure.  Anne Perry’s first Pitt novel was published in 1979.  There was, in other words, a cluster of work, a zeitgeist.  This pop zeitgeist worked it’s way through mystery fiction for the next 20 or so years, and with the publication of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice in 1994, Laurie R.King upended the historical mystery genre once again. Once again there was a cluster of novels written around the same time – Sharan Newman’s Death Comes as Epiphany (1993), Margaret Frazer’s The Novice’s Tale (1992) and Candace Robb’s The Apothecary Rose (1993) – all of which featured, as King’s novel does, a woman at the center of the action. read more

March & May Book clubs – Laurie R. King rules the month of May!

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Laurie R. King

In March, we’ll meet on zoom on Sunday, March 17 at 2 p.m. to discuss Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Edgar nominated Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.  This meeting was moved to March so we’d have copies available, and we do!  This is such a fun, hilarious, yet sweet read.  Look forward to the discussion.

We’re skipping April and meeting twice in May.  Join us May  5 at 2 p.m. on zoom to discuss Laurie R. King’s classic, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.  And, wonderful news – Laurie will be joining us!  This is the 30th anniversary of the first Mary Russell novel, where Mary meets the elderly Sherlock Holmes.  From Kirkus, in 1994: “Nothing in King’s brooding debut A Grave Talent (1993) could have prepared you for this uncommonly rich Sherlockian pastiche, in which the great detective is brought out of retirement among the bees of Sussex by a new amanuensis, budding theologian Mary Russell. Meeting the great man at the awkward age of 15, Russell (as he calls her) proves herself his intellectual equal even before their first case- -mysterious bouts of illness that befall their victims only in clear weather. After investigating a robbery and a kidnapping with Holmes, Mary goes to Oxford, and just when you’ve resigned yourself to more unrelated adventures, the story takes off with a series of bombings that put both Holmes and Mary in danger, and call forth both their sharpest mental efforts and their deepest feelings.” read more

Best of 2022

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I had a really, really hard time keeping this to 10 books – hence my lengthy honorable mention list this year.  This is the first year this list is all women!  That was my goal when I closed the store – to cover new series and books by women and it looks like that’s what’s happening organically.  These are the books that stuck with me all year, books that when I read them, I was entranced and transported. They appeared in different ways. Mariah Fredericks pressed an early advance copy of The Lindbergh Nanny into my eager hands at Malice Domestic last spring – it was a book I was very excited to read and I was not disappointed.  I saw the cover of Blackwater Falls and it called to me – again, I was not disappointed.  I was interested to see Deanna Raybourn doing something so different – again, no disappointment.  It’s such a fun journey of discovery. Some on this list are veterans turning in great books, some are new series or standalones – all have that great, memorable sparkle.  What a wonderful year to be a reader. I did include one reference book this year, one so exceptional it would be criminal not to give it a shout out. read more