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The Best of Sherlock Holmes |
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Laurie King Talks About Writing, Russell, and Holmes
Laurie R. King is a New York Times bestselling author
of detective fiction. She won the 1994 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and is
known for her Mary Russell series featuring Sherlock Holmes and her Kate
Martinelli series set in San Francisco.
Speaking in California at the Los Altos library in June 2010, she explained that she didn't begin writing until 1987 at age 35. While King had not read a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories at that point, she thought her idea for the Russell series was probably inspired by watching some of the Jeremy Brett episodes on PBS. They made her speculate about what Holmes might have been like as a woman in a post-Victorian setting. This evolved into Mary Russell, a young woman and feminist in the early twentieth century who became a partner of Sherlock Holmes.
It took six years to get her first book published in 1993. By that time she had written two Mary Russell novels and A Grave Talent, the first Kate Martinelli book. In retrospect she says it was lucky that her first published work was the Martinelli story. That tale established her as a crime writer with an original concept rather than as a stereotypical beginning pastiche writer. She won an Edgar for it and gained the recognition that allowed her to work on different types of stories.
Beyond Sherlock Holmes: A Series That's More Than a Pastiche
King does not view her Russell series as a pure pastiche. Conan Doyle ended the Holmes stories in 1914, and so the events of her series don't have to fit into the Canonical tales. She's able to develop Holmes as a person who continues to evolve and adapt to a country changed by war and culture.
Many pastiches try and fail to capture the voice of Watson. King avoids this problem by writing most of the stories in the first person with Russell as narrator. Holmes is a key character, but Mary Russell is clearly the protagonist. In addition, King usually has Russell and Holmes take separate paths throughout a book and get together only occasionally. While King thinks her readers probably want more scenes with both characters, she finds these parts to be especially difficult to write.
The Pleasure and Peril of Change
She's now published eleven Russell books, five Martinelli books, and five non-series titles. They intentionally cover a range of subjects and characters. King enjoys the variety and prefers to work on something different after completing one type of story. When she did write two Russell books back-to-back, she placed The Game and Locked Rooms in entirely different settings with very different characters. This variation in her work presents something of a challenge to her publisher's marketing and sales department. At one point their sales brochure ended up saying "Laurie R. King's Next Book is Always a Mystery."
Recently she came up with a "large idea" for a Russell
story and found that it really would not fit into a single book. She and her
publisher decided to split it into two volumes. The first, The Language of
Bees, ends with a dramatic climax but clearly leaves many points
unresolved. The second book, The God of the Hive, concludes the
storyline. Most of it is narrated by Russell, but King found she could add
some variety and better serve the plot by writing from five points of view in
this book.
Getting a title for this story was challenging. Her publisher did not care for her working title of "The Green Man" and she vetoed a proposed "Beekeeper's Grand-daughter." She offered numerous other titles but none resonated, and eventually asked for suggestions on her website. This brought in more than 900 contributions, which she edited down to about a hundred and passed along to her publisher. When none of those worked, they focused on titles involving "Hive." King has degrees in comparative religion and Old Testament theology, and didn't think the publisher would find using "God" in the title to be acceptable, but to her surprise got approval when she finally suggested it.
She made this book more of a thriller than some of her prior volumes, with shorter chapters and more action to keep the reader engaged. This certainly worked for me. It's somewhat lighter in tone than The Language of Bees and the pacing is better. As always King's writing quality sets her books apart from the majority of pastiches. My only criticism is that the ending seemed a bit rushed and a little anti-climatic, but even so I consider it one of the better Russell books and highly recommend it.
Will Mary Russell Walk the Plank With Pirates?
Although she wanted to work on a non-Russell book next, her publisher and the public pushed hard for another in the series. That book, The Pirate King was published in September 2011. In it, Russell is dragged into events involving a film crew making a movie about a movie of The Pirates of Penzance. To provide some of that variety she cherishes, it's a bit of a farce and has more humor than some of her prior books.
Part of the story takes place in Morocco, and King spent a week there doing research. She rarely writes about places that she has not visited at least briefly. This research has taken her to many interesting and enjoyable locations.
What's Next for Mary Russell and Laurie King?
In June 2010, King had been thinking of following The Pirate King with a sequel to the non-Russell Touchstone set in Paris in the late 1920s. However, Russell (or possibly King's publisher) has prevailed once again. By the spring of 2011 King had written some 70 pages of the next Russell book. Her working title is "Garment of Shadows" and it's scheduled for publication in 2012.
At a Sunnyvale Library talk in July 2011 King reported that she still hoped to work on that sequel to Touchstone. But Russell or Holmes may have different ideas.
Besides her Russell books, King was co-editor on two other Holmes-related books published in 2011. The Grand Game Volume One is a collection of some of the best Sherlockian scholarship from 1902 to 1959 about the Holmes stories. A second volume of The Grand Game is scheduled for publication in 2012. A Study in Sherlock is a collection of new mystery and detective tales by famous authors that somehow relate to the Holmes stories but usually do not include Holmes as a character.
The Mary Russell / Sherlock Holmes Mysteries by Laurie R. King
While the Mary Russell books can stand alone, most readers will enjoy them more by starting with the first in the series and reading them in sequence. That's especially true for The Language of Bees and The God of the Hive, which, although very different in tone and pacing, share many key characters and plot elements. At a minimum, those two books should be read in sequence. However, The Pirate King relies less on prior stories and can be enjoyed without reading any of the other books.
The Beekeeper's Apprentice (1994)
A Monstrous Regiment of Women (1995)
A Letter of Mary (1997)
The Moor (1998)
O Jerusalem (1999)
Justice Hall (2002)
The Game (2004)
Locked Rooms (2005)
The Language of Bees (2009)
The God of the Hive (2010)
The Pirate King (2011)
I began publishing a round-up review of the year's best Sherlock Holmes books in 2009. Since then I've selected The Language of Bees, The God of the Hive, and now The Pirate King as recommended choices.
Photos courtesy of Laurie R. King
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