Garment of Shadows
Novelist Laurie R. King has rightly earned her standing in my top
ten list of women mystery writers and her latest offering is one of the reasons
why. Who else can combine the iconic character of Sherlock Holmes with a woman,
Mary Russell, who is not only his wife but also his equal in detecting skills? Then she places them in the fascinating
historical setting of the Morocco of 1924, with France and Spain and native
insurgents involved in colonial wrangling in the region. The novel opens with Russell
discovering that she has no memories and needs to solve the mystery of her own
identity. And so the adventure begins.
I love her prose such as, “It would be a plan as tangled as the
streets of the medina, a garment woven of lies and half truths, of truths that
look like lies, and lies that appear the truth. A garment suited to the
half-light, its precise outline impossible to discern.” Beautiful!
While this is book #12 of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
mystery series, this new novel could be read as a stand-alone. My advice is to
start a reading journey with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice where the story all
begins.
The complete list of books in the series can be found at the author's website at
Stay tuned to hear about the other women mystery writers on my list!
