The Moor

The MoorIn this, the fourth book about Mary Russell and her relationship with Sherlock Holmes, the main character is neither Mary nor Sherlock but the louring presence of Dartmoor, which clings to this novel like fog on wool.

Lauries R, King's prose is vivid and memorable helping me to experience the desolation of Dartmoor in winter. This is how she describes a trudge across the moor by Mary and Holmes:

"A meandering ridge on an approaching hill resembling the work of some huge prehistoric mole, became, on closer examination, an ancient stone wall nearly subsumed by the slow encroachment of the turf. A distance sweep of russet across a hillside, a scurf of firs and dying bracken and fern was cut by the dark of another ancient wall drawn show more along its side.

It was I supposed, picturesque enough, given the limited pallet of drab colours, but as a piece of impressionist art it served to evoke only the disagreeable feelings of restlessness, melancholia and a faint thread of menace."
As the trudge across the damp turf continues we see its impact on the spirit:

"By midday I was as grey and silent as anything else in that bleak place; edgy, with an unidentifiable sense of waiting and aching for a spot of colour."
But the novel is not all atmosphere. There is a strong and ingenious plot, stronger, I think than that of "The Hound Of The Baskervilles", that provides an opportunity to explore every aspect of life on the moor, including a wonderful scene in which the men of the moor sing in harmony for Mary in the local inn. The plot also takes us back to Baskerville hall, this time in the hands of an American, and shows us how times move on, even if the moor remains the same.

I enjoyed seeing Mary and Holmes working together, each understanding what the other would do and moving wordlessly to make it happen. Mary is no Watson, following where Holmes leads, she is an equal partner, trusted and depended upon.

There are two places where we get an insight into how this partnership works In her first walk across the moor, Mary tells us that the atmosphere was so spooky that:

"I might very well have heard the soft pad of the Baskerville hound behind me and felt its warm breath on the back of my neck. However, with Holmes beside me as a talisman, the spooks kept their distance and what might have been a place of animosity and danger was rendered merely desolate to the point of being grim."
"Talisman". What a wonderful word to describe one's partner , summoning up trust and safety and power.

We get to see how Holmes views Mary, his advice to a young man looking for a woman is:

"You look around for a woman with brains and spirit. You'll never be bored."

Reading this book is like settling into a favourite armchair next to a fire: comforting and deeply relaxing. show less

The whole sub genre of Sherlock Holmes-type mysteries is by its very nature highly intellectual, what with all the deductive reasoning, but this entry in the Mary Russell series is especially so. I was quite tickled to realize that big chunks of the mystery here were to be solved through clues gleaned from extensive reading. I love that Mary can be very--perhaps most--helpful to Holmes from her cozy fireside wingback. It is a position to be envied, and aspired to: armchair detective. Of course there is a fair amount of traipsing that occurs in this story, as Russell and Holmes slog up, down and across the moor, a place unique and moody, gloomy and beautiful, inspiring and deadly. The descriptions are rich and gorgeous, and make me want show more to see it for myself. I hope it exists as Laurie King writes it here, because it sounds like a weird and wonderful landscape. show less

If you’ve read my reviews of the other books in this series you’ll already know that I really love them. If you haven’t here’s a quick recap; Sherlock Holmes, a real historical figure retired to Sussex in order to tend to his bees. While there he met Mary Russell; a somewhat moody, if quite brilliant, teenager and took her under his wing. She became his apprentice and later his wife. Errr, spoiler alert! In this, the fourth in the series, Sherlock sends Russell a telegram summoning her to Dartmoor and the moor that was the setting for The Hound of the Baskervilles. There are reports of another ghostly beast roaming the countryside and an old friend of Holmes would like him to investigate. Especially when a man is found dead on show more the moor.

The mystery plays a much larger role in this book than it has in the others I’ve read. But for the most part what I loved about them I loved about this. Russell, as our narrator, is a great character. Full of her own weaknesses and faults, but also with so many strengths that she is easily Holmes’ equal. She provides a much different interpretation of the detective that Watson did.

The friend who calls Holmes for assistance is the real life Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould.[1] Gould sounds like quite a character, and comes across as such in the novel. He and Russell don’t quite get along at their first meeting, but they soon come to appreciate one another.

As with the other books in this series Russell has a lot of trouble with the sexism of her age. But it never overwhelms the book, as I think I said before, there is no preachiness here. I suppose you could argue that Russell isn’t really a product of her time, but it was a time of great change in gender roles and politics. Besides, I really enjoy her so I’m not about to complain. show less

King leaves few stops unpulled in this atmospheric tale. For those of us who love settings that qualify as characters, Dartmoor permeates every page of this fourth book in her marvelous series. The land, the weather, the abandoned mines, the remote farms, the legends and tales... King brings it all to life-- sometimes to creepy, hair-raising life.

Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles is the quasi-foundation of this book, it's not necessary to have read it before picking up The Moor. If you have read it, you'll begin King's book with a shiver of anticipation for the spooky things that certainly lie ahead. And they do. I found the author's depiction of Dartmoor enough to give me goosebumps without the sightings show more of bony coaches and one-eyed hounds or the strange new inhabitants of Baskerville Hall.

As usual, King knows how to make us feel as though we've stepped right into England in 1924, and she certainly knows how to tell a story, but it's her characters who make the books truly memorable. Holmes is Holmes. You'd recognize him anywhere, and he's perfectly at home in the early twentieth century. Mary Russell is brilliant in her own way and incredibly strong-willed. If these two were horses, few people would ever dream of harnessing them together. Only the very wise would be able to see that it's the only pairing either of them would accept. One of the treats of reading this series is to watch these two individuals-- who spend a lot of their time apart-- gradually learn that they can become a couple without sacrificing the parts of themselves that they hold most dear.

Even though I found that I could deduce most of the mystery this time around (I'm still not sure why), The Moor was a delight to read. Atmosphere, setting, time period, Sherlock Holmes, and one woman strong enough to stand side by side with the world's greatest detective. Get comfortable and immerse yourself in this tale. show less

Mary is called from her studies in Oxford to join her husband Sherlock Holmes on Dartmoor. At first resentful, Mary soon becomes interested in investigating the death of an itinerant tin miner and rumors of a ghostly carriage and a hound with a single glowing eye. They are staying at the home of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould who is a long-time friend of Sherlock's. Baring-Gould is nearly ninety and dying but he is still a force to be reckoned with on the moor. He is the author of more than 150 books on a wide variety of topics (and Mary reads quite a number of them while in his home). He's most famous for collecting the traditional songs of Dartmoor and trying to preserve the culture that he fears will be lost when communication gets show more easier.

Dartmoor is the scene of one of Sherlock's most famous cases - The Hound of the Baskervilles -- and Baskerville Hall and its new owner American Richard Ketteridge play an important part in this story. I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the land and the people of Dartmoor as Mary came to appreciate the stark beauty of the land. Even without the supernatural creatures who are supposed to inhabit the land, the fogs and marshes provide enough danger for any traveler. Add in the British military using part of the moor to test artillery and test out a new sort of tank and you have a dangerous place to spend time.

This was an excellent episode in this series. I liked seeing how Mary and Holmes are getting along after two years of marriage. show less

Mary is called from her studies in Oxford to join her husband Sherlock Holmes on Dartmoor. At first resentful, Mary soon becomes interested in investigating the death of an itinerant tin miner and rumors of a ghostly carriage and a hound with a single glowing eye. They are staying at the home of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould who is a long-time friend of Sherlock's. Baring-Gould is nearly ninety and dying but he is still a force to be reckoned with on the moor. He is the author of more than 150 books on a wide variety of topics (and Mary reads quite a number of them while in his home). He's most famous for collecting the traditional songs of Dartmoor and trying to preserve the culture that he fears will be lost when communication gets show more easier.

Dartmoor is the scene of one of Sherlock's most famous cases - The Hound of the Baskervilles -- and Baskerville Hall and its new owner American Richard Ketteridge play an important part in this story. I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the land and the people of Dartmoor as Mary came to appreciate the stark beauty of the land. Even without the supernatural creatures who are supposed to inhabit the land, the fogs and marshes provide enough danger for any traveler. Add in the British military using part of the moor to test artillery and test out a new sort of tank and you have a dangerous place to spend time.

This was an excellent episode in this series. I liked seeing how Mary and Holmes are getting along after two years of marriage. show less

I would have loved to have reread The Hound of the Baskervilles before this, but I was in a hurry to get to the ARC of Pirate King that was waiting. Next time – because these are definitely books I will reread now and then as time goes by.

It's great fun to watch the investigation into new reports of spectral happenings on the Moor, punctuated by Holmes's disgust with the common man's susceptibility and Russell's very private never-spoken niggling question as to whether in such a weird (in the classical sense) place as this the supernatural might not be real. But best of all is the emotion in the story: another glimpse of Holmes the human being, the fierce friend.

The Moor is a prime example of why this series isn't mere fan-fiction, show more why it rises above the level of most pastiche. I'll probably grow repetitious with these reviews, but so be it: Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes is beautifully true to Doyle's, having realistically aged since the last of the original stories, and having found a new lease on life. LRK knows the world she's writing in, both the real world of the 1920's and the earlier London and its environs of the original stories and books – knows it well enough that she can move so confidently from, as here, London to Yorkshire that the reader never questions a detail. Generally the books in the Holmes and Russell series pay only passing homage to the original works; obviously The Moor is a law unto itself. In more ways than one. And honestly, who could resist doing honor to The Hound? It's such a beautiful opportunity to both tie the progenitor and the offspring together and to create the distance this Holmes desires between the things that man Doyle wrote about him and what an intelligent and loving wife would set down. And it also ties together the fictional hero and the man who wrote his "biography", Sabine Baring Gould, in a lovely manner.

Yes, I'm the one who constantly complains, bitterly, about the use of real people as characters in fiction (as well as the use of other people's characters). But there is a world of difference between the Jane Austen, Lady Detective books (not to mention Jane Austen, Vampire or whatever) and this sort of treatment. This was … wish fulfillment, in a way. Like the Doctor Who episode Vincent and the Doctor – which was something of a valentine to the artist, not so much never-was-or-could-be as an I-wish-this-could-have-been (and I really do) - it's a lovely thing to imagine that this great aficionado of Holmes, Sabine Baring-Gould, was in fact the detective's old and valued friend. I think he would have loved it. As with the setting and Holmes himself, it is obvious that LRK knows what she is talking about inside and out, and has the utmost respect for both the fictional and the actual. It's what makes the series not only tolerable but wonderful. show less