The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Being a Sherlock Holmes fan, I approached this one with a bit of trepidation. Some pastiches have fallen rather flat with me so I was pleasantly surprised, and quite taken, with both King’s version of a much older Holmes and young Mary Russell. Such an odd, and yet perfectly matched pair of intellects! Told from the point of view of Mary, this is just as much a coming-of-age historical novel as it is a detective/mystery story. Also, in my personal opinion, King (and the audiobook narrator, Jenny Sterlin) nailed the personality, mannerisms, quirks and nuances of the great detective, taking into account the gradual decline in certain faculties we all may fall prey to as we age. As for Mary, King has crafted a wonderful character to take show more on the mantle of a female detective with many of the same qualities of Holmes. Not surprising, the first part of the book is more focused on Mary’s apprenticeship and the growing friendship between Holmes and Russell. The verbal sparing between the two of them – like two goats ready to but horns – is good for a chuckle or two! The bond of friendship is wonderful to observe and is a strong one between Holmes and Russell, even if Mary continues to Holmes as Holmes while she comes to refer to Dr. Watson as Uncle John. As for the mystery – yes, they do find themselves embroiled in detection (and not necessarily by choice) – King provides readers with a new and wonderful sinister cat and mouse game to rival Holmes’ earlier battles with his arch nemesis, Moriarty, providing for some growing suspense.

Overall, a true reading delight for this Sherlock Holmes fan and I never thought I would say this, but I am quite happily adding the Mary Russell series to my already burgeoning list of series reading. show less

This is the first book in a series that began in 1994 and published the most recent entry - the fifteenth - in 2018. It introduces fifteen-year-old Mary Russell who is an orphan, an heiress, and a scholar. The story begins with her almost stepping on Sherlock Holmes when she is out wandering the Sussex countryside and reading Virgil. Holmes is watching bees and trying to track a new swarm for one of his hives.

Ostensibly retired, Holmes fills his time keeping his bees, doing a variety of experiments, and writing about various topics like footprints, tire tracks, cigarette ash, and blood. Their first meeting shows them that, despite their many differences, they share many characteristics too. Their hungry intellects, curiosity and show more deductive powers lead to a developing friendship.

Holmes takes Russell as his informal apprentice and Russell finds a home that is much warmer than the one provided by her guardian aunt. Gradually, Russell gains the skills Holmes is teaching which go along with her own interests in theology.

The story covers about four years of time with Mary growing from a precocious fifteen-year-old to a more worldly and educated nineteen-year-old who moves from apprenticeship to mastery of the arts of detection. She becomes a full partner and equal in the variety of cases that come to them. From an early case of the kidnapping of a six-year-old senator's daughter to a case with roots in Holmes' past, we can see the growth in their partnership and in Mary's skills.

I really enjoyed this rereading of a book I read more than 20 years ago. I loved the historical detail about a time of great change in Great Britain. I loved the contrast between a 20th Century young woman and a Victorian man. I also loved the way those two very different people had so many similarities. The mystery was engaging and complex. I didn't remember who the villain was and enjoyed watching Mary and Holmes follow the clues to discover her.

Now, I want to go on and read the rest of the series again so that I can watch Mary grow and her relationship with Holmes gain in depth and complexity. show less

I stumbled over "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" and fell in love with it after only a few pages. As the audiobook was recorded in 2014 I thought I had discovered a hot new talent to share with the world. Then I noticed that I was reading the "20th Anniversary Edition" and realised that I was catching up with an author I should have been reading for year.

The upside of this is that there are twelve more books in the series already, so a feast lies ahead of me.

The beekeeper's apprentice of the title is Mary Russell. She is as old as the century (or at least she was when the book was written in 1994) and is looking back on her long association with Sherlock Holmes whom she first bumped into on the Sussex Downs in 1915, when she was a teenage show more girl recovering from a recent calamity and seeking refuge in books and long walks. Sherlock Holmes, in his fifties and allegedly retired, now lives in the country, keeping bees and writing papers on the topics such as how to disguise one's footprints.

The book spans a four-year period which lays the foundation for a long-term relationship between Russell and Holmes. During this time the two are involved in three "cases" plus a side trip to Palestine. While the cases and the means of solving them are very reminiscent of Conan Doyle's Holmes, the man himself is quite different. The Holmes Russell sees is older, more humane, and (eventually) more willing to share than his earlier self. Russell is intellect and focus, seasoned by guilt beyond her years and more than ready both to challenge and learn from Holmes. Russell and Holmes and the relationship between them are the heart of this book. The cases are there only to set that heart racing.

The pace of the book, while not as slow as the original Conan Doyle stories sometimes were, is still leisurely by modern standards. I think it is all the better for that. I liked the idea that Russell and Holmes, on a desperate search to find a missing girl, still take days to reach the scene of the crime so that they can arrive in disguise, using the right form of transport. The finally case includes a side-trip to Palestine of several weeks. It is not strictly necessary to the plot and we find out very little about the assignment that Russell and Holmes have been on but their passage through the desert is uses to season and strengthen their relationship in ways that seem authentic to me.

If you are already a fan of Holmes then this book revisits that universe in a way that invigorates and refreshes while still honouring and building on the original (Think what "Dark Knight Rises" did for Batman or what "Into Darkness" did for Star Trek). If you've never read Conan Doyle this book will still carry you along on its merits and may even tempt you to try some of the "original" material for yourself.

I suspect that this is a love/hate book. If the style of writing doesn't grip your imagination and win your heart by the end of Book 1 of the novel, then this is not for you. If, like me, you are entranced, then another eleven or so books lie in your future. show less

It’s fun to see King have her way with Watson, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, and the rest of the gang (even Lestrade’s son appears, now the Inspector Lestrade working at the Yard) – but Mary Russell is the true winner here. She enters into the world of the canon and breathes new life into it, in a way that I think does Conan Doyle proud. There is a new high standard for Holmes pastiche and it lives here. It’s more than just writing a new Holmes story, it’s making Holmes new again – bringing him to life again. How wonderful.

More at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-12d

I remember reading this book for the first time when I was a teenager and wishing I could be Mary Russell. Reading it again some ten years, I wish that if not to be her, to be her friend. I also remember my hesitancy the first time around...Sherlock Holmes training and working with a girl? Really? However, King deftly weaves together a fantastic protégé and partner for a Holmes very true to himself. Mary Russell is smart, sturdy, and willing to take on a man's world (and profession) which she does with aplomb. However, she is still a young woman coming into her own, and it is her complex nature and her wits that made me say okay...Sherlock Holmes working with a woman. Not just okay, fantastic! And since it is Holmes, there are of show more course, cases to be solved. The plot is also wonderful, with clues available to the observant reader. (All of which I missed the first, and probably not all gleaned in the second go!) It's just a very well written story, well written mystery, with a nod to the cannon while breathing its own new life. If you haven't picked up this series, or started with a later book, do go back and start with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. show less

Even listening to a scratchy, occasionally garbled, obviously-much-played library cassette recording of this couldn't stop me from loving this book. It's just the sort of book I like to read for pure pleasure, for interesting characters doing clever and amusing things. The dynamic between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes could have gone terribly wrong in the hands of another writer, but King handled it perfectly.

And yay, there are more of them! I foresee this being one of the series a dole out to myself slowly over time, when I know I need something that is just a fun, good book.

This is an affectionate and very entertaining romp through the fringes of Sherlock Holmes country, written by someone with a very good ear for the flow of the original Sherlock Holmes stories and the professional competence as a writer to get away with a pastiche that doesn't read like internet-grade fan-fiction.

Most of the obvious flaws are not introduced by King, but stem from weaknesses in the original. Sir Arthur was writing sensational fiction to meet Edwardian popular tastes: a century later we're a bit less willing to accept plots that rely on disguises, obscure ciphered messages and the ability to follow a line of footprints across a busy London park. King's faithful revival of the format makes these weaknesses a bit more show more obvious. Bringing in an intelligent, assertive young woman — you notice how hard I'm trying not to use the word "feisty"? — as Holmes's pupil and counterpart helps to give us a modern slant on the stories, but it also exposes the trick behind the whole Holmes mystique: if you have two characters who are both logical reasoning machines with interesting flaws, you start to see how it's done. Modern detectives are expected to have a little more depth, really.

As well as being a mystery, this is also an historical novel, of course. And the great challenge of writing historical fiction set in the recent past is that a lot of your readers are going to be more or less familiar with the language, history, and conventions of the period. You don't necessarily have to write in pastiche period style, but you do have to be careful not to introduce words or descriptive details that jar with the illusion. This is tricky: sometimes the requirements of plausibility conflict with pure accuracy, and sometimes both have to take second place to the plot.

King does a pretty good job in this respect. She has covered herself in advance by leaving it unclear when the text is supposed to have been written and by giving her narrator a mixed Anglo-American background (this not only pleases the punters in the US, but also provides a good excuse for any inadvertent Americanisms). The setting in the last years of the great War is also a good choice, because it was a period in which there are plenty of examples of intelligent, dynamic young women making their mark on English society (Rebecca West, Dorothy L Sayers, the Pankhursts, Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, etc., etc.).

The text has very few obvious anachronisms in it (one that annoyed me was "train station", an expression that didn't exist either in British or in American English until about 25 years ago). The most glaring anachronism I saw was a reference to the Welsh counties of Gwent and Powys, which were only created in the seventies (Monmouthshire, Brecon and Radnor would be right for the period). The language is occasionally a little bit awkward and stilted, but that can plausibly be explained away by the pernicious example of Doctor Watson's prose.

Oxford is dangerous ground, because we have so many first-hand accounts of it at that time, and because Oxford is a place where using the right names really matters if you are an undergraduate. King gets most of it right, but she does make a few slips. Saying "Balliol College" instead of "Balliol" in ordinary speech instantly marks you as an outsider. And no-one in the university would ever describe the vacation as a "holiday" (this is the only place in British English where the word "vacation" is used regularly). Some of the oddities of Mary's university career can perhaps be put down to wartime measures or the anomalous situation of the women's colleges at the time, but it's still a bit unlikely that an Oxford theology course of the time would satisfy someone who was primarily interested in Judaism, and extremely unlikely that an undergraduate would be given a key to her lodgings or be allowed to keep a car (even with Mycroft's influence). But those are details, and this is an escapist adventure story. We shouldn't look too closely... show less