Saturday, September 15, 2012

Laurie R. King and my top ten women mystery writer list



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!

No comments:

Post a Comment