Novel, Language, Holmes, Sherlock, Featuring, Mary, Suspense, Russell, Bees

The Language of Bees: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (A Mary Russell Novel)

• ISBN13: 9780553588347
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

For Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solveâ€"the unexplained disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes’s beloved hives.
But the anticipated sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a galling memory from the past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, when the surrealist painter had been charged withâ€"and exonerated fromâ€"murder. Now the troubled young man is enlisting the Holmeses’ help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and child.

Mary has often observed that there are many kinds of madness, and before this case yields its shattering solution she’ll come into dangerous contact with a fair number of them. From suicides at Stonehenge to the dark secrets of a young woman’s past on the streets of Shanghai, Mary will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she’s ever facedâ€"a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart.Book Description
In a case that will push their relationship to the breaking point, Mary Russell must help reverse the greatest failure of her legendary husband’s storied pastâ€"a painful and personal defeat that still has the power to sting…this time fatally.

For Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solve--the unexplained disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes’s beloved hives.

But the anticipated sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a galling memory from her husband’s past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, when the promising surrealist painter had been charged with--and exonerated from--murder. Now the talented and troubled young man was enlisting their help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and child.

When it comes to communal behavior, Russell has often observed that there are many kinds of madness. And before this case yields its shattering solution, she’ll come into dangerous contact with a fair number of them. From suicides at Stonehenge to a bizarre religious cult, from the demimonde of the Café Royal at the heart of Bohemian London to the dark secrets of a young woman’s past on the streets of Shanghai, Russell will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she’s ever faced--a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart.

---

Amazon Exclusive: Laurie R. King on The Language of Bees

As a writer, I court serendipity.

Another way to say that would be, as a writer, I really don’t know what I’m doing.

In a stand-alone novel it doesn’t much matter that I pursue my plot-line in a dark attic with a failing flashlight, because in the early drafts I simply put everything down, then spend the rewrite peeling away whatever makes no sense or isn’t absolutely necessary. And when I’m finished with the novel, I’m finished--with the book and with the characters.

A series novel is a different animal. What I wrote in 1993, I have to live with in 2008, even if I no longer have the faintest idea what I had in mind back then. Sometimes this creates ridiculously convoluted problems, and I spend hours and hours paging through to find what color someone’s eyes were or if I credited them with a certain skill, and I end up wishing I could just recall all copies of the earlier book and make people forget about that line on page 238. Other times, well, I’d like to take credit for being such a genius planner, but as I said, I really don’t know what I’m doing.

However, some deep, distant, well-hidden part of my brain does, and when that Organizing Principle takes charge, things turn out in interesting ways.

Take my newest book, The Language of Bees. This, the ninth Russell and Holmes novel, is set in the summer of 1924, and its central character (apart from the series regulars) is a young Surrealist artist by the name of Damian Adler. And for those readers who are up on their Conan Doyle, yes, it’s THAT Adler.

Back in 1994, I wrote a book called A Monstrous Regiment of Women, the second in the series. In one scene, Russell is trying to get away from Holmes for a while so she can think about her future without him looking over her shoulder. When a friend conveniently presents her with a drug-addled fiancé in need of assistance, Russell seizes the opportunity to shove the young man’s problems onto Holmes and send them both away. One of the weapons she uses to force Holmes into agreement is a reference to his long lost son:

“And if he were your son? Would you not want someone to try?” It was a dirty blow, low and unscrupulous and quite unforgivably wicked. Because, you see, he did have a son once, and someone had tried.

And this is pretty much the only appearance of this mythic entity, the son, despite queries and entreaties and speculations from readers. I could not even have said for certain why I inflicted the master detective with paternity, other than Russell’s need for a weapon strong enough to bully Holmes into obedience, combined with the feeling that this drug-addled young officer needed to have a deeper meaning for Holmes than just a nursing job.

But the Organizing Principle in the back of my mind knew why he was there.

The “lovely, lost son” was glimpsed in Monstrous Regiment so that fourteen years later, I could sit down to write The Language of Bees and craft a situation as significant for Holmes as the psychic trauma of the previous book had been for Russell. Locked Rooms forced Russell to confront a past she had hidden from herself. The Language of Bees gives Holmes a second chance to know the son he had lost.

(I should, perhaps, mention that this idea of Holmes having a son by Irene Adler--“The woman”--is not mine alone. W. S. Baring Gould, whose definitive biography of the master detective was recently updated by Leslie Klinger in The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, suggested the presence of a son. The boy, under the name Nero Wolfe, himself became a rather well-known detective.)

As soon as my mind dangled the idea of Holmes’ son returning, a world of possibilities blossomed: Where had the young man been? (perhaps... Shanghai?) Why come back now? (A wife disappeared, and a murder, and--what about a child!) And since one of the Conan Doyle stories refers to the art in Holmes’ blood (his grandmother’s brother was the artist Vernet) and since Irene Adler was an opera singer, why not make the son an artist--one of the Surrealists, just to put a twist in his relationship with the ultra-rational Holmes?

I’d like to say I had all this in mind back in 1995 when I had Mary Russell drop mention of Holmes’ son, but I prefer to save fiction for my novels.

And as I said at the beginning, as a writer, I court serendipity. I may not know what I’m doing, but it makes for a more exciting journey, getting there. --Laurie R. King

(Photo © Seth Affoumado)

List Price: $ 15.00



Price: $ 8.25

Other posts like this, by keyword:

Novel:

Sex Pistols: The Graphic Novel ...
Dead Shot (A Sniper Novel) ...
Her Punishment! – An Erotic Novel (erotica) Reviews ...
The Proving Trail: A Novel ...
Romance of the Snob Squad ...
A House Is Not a Home: A B-Boy Blues Novel ...
Winter’s Bone: A Novel ...
From First Draft To Finished Novel: A Writer’s Guide To Cohesive Story Building Reviews ...
Swine Not?: A Novel Pig Tale ...
A Woman Called Sage: A Novel ...
Language:

Personnages: An Intermediate Course in French Language and Francophone Culture (Cengage Acquisition) ...
The Language Center at Tacoma Community College Library in Tacoma, WA ...
The Language of Democracy: Political Rhetoric in the United States and Britain, 1790-1900 ...
Name of the Game (Language of Love #33) Reviews ...
Envisioning Literature: Literary Understanding and Literature Instruction (Language and Literacy Series) Reviews ...
Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom ...
The American Heritage English as a Second Language Dictionary Reviews ...
Vocabulary Workshop: Third Course (Elements of Language) ...
Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom ...
Greek (Modern), Basic: Learn to Speak and Understand Modern Greek with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster’s Pimsleur) Re ...
Holmes:

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, vol. 4: Three BBC Radio Full-Cast Radio Dramas (BBC Audio) ...
The Best of Sherlock Holmes: Adventures of the World’s Most Famous Detective ...
Shannon Holmes, Private Detective ...
Sherlock Holmes for Children ...
The Adventure of the Red-Headed League (The Graphic Novel Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) ...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds ...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Seance for a Vampire ...
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ...
The Television Sherlock Holmes Reviews ...
SHERLOCK HOLMES The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot (Mystery Crime Detective Sleuth Story) ...
Sherlock:

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, vol. 4: Three BBC Radio Full-Cast Radio Dramas (BBC Audio) ...
The Best of Sherlock Holmes: Adventures of the World’s Most Famous Detective ...
Sherlock Holmes for Children ...
The Adventure of the Red-Headed League (The Graphic Novel Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) ...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds ...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Seance for a Vampire ...
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ...
The Television Sherlock Holmes Reviews ...
SHERLOCK HOLMES The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot (Mystery Crime Detective Sleuth Story) ...
Sherlock Holmes SC (Sherlock Holmes (Dynamite Entertainment)) Reviews ...
Featuring:

Planet Golf 2012 Wall Calendar: Featuring the Greatest Golf Courses Around the World ...
Twiddlebugs at Work: Featuring Jim Henson’s Sesame Street Muppets ...
The Celestine Prophecy: A Concise Guide to the Nine Insights Featuring Original Essays & Lectures by the Author ...
The World Encyclopedia of Coins & Coin Collecting: The definitive illustrated reference to the world’s greatest coins and a profes ...
ELVIS AND ME: A MYSTERY THRILLER FEATURING ELVIS PRESLEY ...
Winning! the Awesome and Amazing Insider’s Book of Windows Game Tips, Traps, and Sneaky Tricks (Featuring Microsoft Entertainment Pac ...
Paper Creations, Cards and Gifts: Over 30 Paperfolded Designs Featuring Origami, Iris and Teabag Folding ...
The Golden Pig: Featuring Hymie Goldman, The Defective Detective ...
What are some good fantasy novels featuring females heroines? ...
GODDESS IN A CAGE: one of a series featuring homicide detective Terrell Newman ...
Mary:

Irish America Hall of Fame: Mary Higgins Clark ...
Mary and The Wrongs of Woman (Oxford World’s Classics) ...
The Mary Celeste: An Unsolved Mystery from History ...
William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Volume 9 ...
Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother ...
Mary McMurtrie’s Country Garden Flowers ...
Science And Health – Mary Baker Eddy ...
Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical ...
What Mary and Joseph Knew About Parenting: Surprising Insights From The Best (And Worst) Parents In The Bible ...
Now You’re Talking | Mary Lynn Plageman commentary: Sarge provided teachable moment ...
Suspense:

Aftermath: A Novel of Suspense (Inspector Banks Novels) ...
Former CIA Operative Wilson To Pen Suspense Novels ...
Sentimental Me: Travel Mystery Suspense ...
Secret of Happiness, The (Thriller Suspense) Reviews ...
Parenting Girls ...
Darker Than Night: A Collection of Horror and Suspense Short Stories ...
Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror ...
999: Twenty-nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense ...
Strip Search: A Novel of Suspense ...
Russell:

Russell P. Twist ...
WordTheatre Presents: The Child Screams and Looks Back at You by Russell Banks [MP3 Audio Download] Reviews ...
WordTheatre Presents: The Child Screams and Looks Back at You by Russell Banks [MP3 Audio Download] Reviews ...
WordTheatre Presents: The Child Screams and Looks Back at You by Russell Banks [MP3 Audio Download] ...
Russell Brand’s wild ride ...
Russell Europe Indexes: Emerging Europe Outperforms Developed Europe YTD ...
Dog Den Mystery (Jack Russell, Dog Detective #1) ...
The Phantom Mudder (Jack Russell: Dog Detective) ...
Bees: