Pirate King by Laurie R King

This is the promo poster, isn't it divine?

I bought this bad boy in hardcover the week it came out. I'm a library girl, so the fact that I just went and bought it without reading it is high praise, indeed. 

It is the latest installment of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series and I enjoyed every second. King has taken a slight turn with this one - it's almost a comedy. It's certainly humorous (even when the suspense is ratcheting up, the situation is still amusing) and still a page-turner.

I suspect that King has introduced a character we'll see again - one of the actresses in the movie Russell has sought employment with gets a lot of play.

Yes, you read that right. The premise here is that an assistant to a rather popular production company has gone missing and Scotland Yard (via Holmes) would like Russell to investigate - under cover, of course. So she buy fashionable shoes and boards a steamer to suss out what's happened. And it's not quite a comedy of errors from then on out. More like...a comedy of coincidences? A comedy of ironies? At any rate - it's many chapters of suspenseful fun.

This series just keeps getting better and better - after the last pair of novels (one ending with a cliff-hanger and the next wrapping up that adventure) it was nice to read a lighter tale about my favorite sleuthing duo.

The biggest downside that I could see arrived on the very last printed page of the book - the part where it talk about the author. I'll just quote it for you: "She lives in Northern California, where she is at work on her next novel of historical suspense, Garment of Shadows, to be published by Bantam in 2013." I will be quite miffed if this bruhaha about the Mayan calendar winds up being correct and I don't get a chance to read Garment of Shadows. I'll just have to stalk King in the afterlife to find out what happens.


If you haven't read this series, do start at the beginning, with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. It helps to read in order of publication.