Customer Reviews

Game (Mary Russell Mystery)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Mary Russell, the much younger, part jewish and equal on all terms, wife of Sherlock Holmes is on another exciting case. This one takes them to India via cruise ship in search of Kimball O'Hara, the now grown up Kim of Kipling fame. On the way, the meet a suspicious American, with mother and sister in tow; a precocious youth who joins them in their quest and an Indian Price who is more than meets the eye.

The games afoot!

I love these books for their adventure, the history and the characters. Ms. King remains as true to the original Holmes as I would ever want and creates new stories with the fabulous character of Mary Russell.

If you are new to this series, I'd start at the beginning with The Bee Keeper's Apprentice. If not, I would get this book as quickly as possible.

I crave Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes stories. The latest installment of the series does not dissapoint. Laurie R. King has continued to grow her characters without losing any of their charm from "The Beekeeper's Apprentice."

I would certainly say that the books need to be read in their correct order. And, this new book is toeing the line (along with "A Monstrous Regiment of Women") as one of my favourite in the series.

The locations are wonderful--we meet delightful new characters, and the mystery is wonderfully complicated, per usual.

As is often the case, Mycroft Holmes, who is ill and abed, turns to his detective brother to do what the entire British Secret Service cannot, track down Kimball O'Hara, who has disappeared into India. Of course, Kimball, who is the original for Rudyard Kipling's Kim, has always been disappeared into India. He has been a British agent, worked for the betterment of his adopted country of India, and been something of a mystic. He is often missing, but this time Mycroft is convinced that there has been foul play.

Holmes is selected because he spent time in India during his own great disappearance, has met O'Hara, and, I suspect, because his wife is Mary Russell. Mary is every bit Holmes equal, and in some ways his better. First as a team, and then separately, they adventure to Northern India and the Principality of Khanpur, where they must face corruption, insanity, and sedition in an adventure that becomes quite a bit more than a rescue mission.

King does her usual best to mix plenty of fact into her fiction, so that 'The Game' becomes a travelogue and a sociological record in addition to an adventure. There is less deduction in this novel than in some of her other Russell/Holmes stories. Due mostly to the fact that the clues always lead in one direction and the real excitement becomes the tricks, feats, and disguises that enable the team to survive and conquer. King also excels at developing a supporting cast, and as one might expect from a book set in India, that cast is almost numberless.

My only real criticism is that the story is very slow paced. Indeed, it is timed more like a travel diary than an adventure novel. I'm comfortable with an author that lavishes a wealth of detail on an interesting story, but for those that prefer a brisker pace this may be a bit off-putting. Kings ability to capture both the culture of the Asian subcontinent and the artificiality of the British presence, right at the time when India was in a crisis between the desire for independence, the influence of the Raj, and the menace of a Russia looking hungrily over the Himalayas.

Laurie R King's series of Sherlock Holmes adventures in which the great detective is joined by his parter (now wife) Mary Russell have seen the two lead characters travel to various locations, most notably Palestine. "The Game" continues this exoticism, placing the adventure in British India - quite possibly in what is now Pakistan, although King tactfully avoids actually locating the fictional Khanpur on a map.

"The Game" is an example of that interesting sort of novel in which other authors' characters turn up - in this case, Conan Doyle's Holmes is joined by Rudyard Kipling's Kim. That is to say, Holmes and Russell are sent to India to find Kim and his spirit definitely pervades their adventures.
I use "adventures" advisedly, since King tends to avoid the traditional Holmes setup of having the detective lounging in Baker Street and identifying the villain by the unusual paint marks on his hatband. Here, Holmes' skills run to Morse code and relative fluency in Hindi, but none of the deductive powers he is normally associated with. To be fair, the traditional Holmesian deductions are one of the more difficult literary tricks to pull off, and were King to try them too often she would be accused variously of writing pastiches of the real Holmes or (worse) of getting the deductions wrong in the first place.

King's strengths lie in the construction of an interesting adventure story, and "The Game" does not disappoint on this level. Holmes and Russell adventure through Aden briefly, before taking in Delhi and much of rural India en route to Khanpur. The princely state itself is an unusual creation, although it is quite possible to imagine a bored maharajah treating his ancestral home like the giant country house this one turns into. While the Indian travelogue digressions might seem a little overdone, it could be argued that this is how the country appeared to Russell - who was of course a product of her times, no matter how enlightened she and her husband were in relative terms.

"The Game", however, is not the strongest of Russell-and-Holmes novels. Several of the characters in Khanpur are quite interesting, but only turn up as diversions to the main action. One would hope that in future instalments of the series one or more of these characters will play a more central role - and given King's traditional links between novels, this could well happen.
The exotic adventure story plot is well-engineered, but in places it seems like a rehash of "O Jerusalem". This is particularly true in Aden, which could just as easily pass for part of Palestine in the earlier novel. King even admits as much, when she has Russell explain that dressing as a Muslim presented no real challenges because she'd done so before and could recite the obligatory prayers in Arabic already.
The novel also seems to end abruptly, almost as if the various narrative strands were getting out of hand. Everything is tidied up - in ways which may or may not make sense given the politics of the time - but the ending seems a little too convenient. Perhaps this means that some of this plot will reappear in future adventures, too.

All in all, a solid entry in the series. Far from the heights of the earlier novels, but still a good read in one of the more interesting series in recent fiction.

The Game is a lot of fun. What is most fun is that the relationship between Holmes and Russell is back, after the arid non-relationship in Justice Hall. Sparring, arguing, constantly aware of each other, Holmes and Russell give The Game two lively, distinct voices, two styles that spin a plot full of games. Great read. Glad to have you both back with us, Holmes and Russell!

The entire Holmes/Russell series is just incredibly wonderful, and I enjoyed this book very much. The history involved in every book is fascinating, and this installment is no exception.

That said, I do think this book had a little bit too much "action/adventure" for my tastes. Especially toward the end, I found I was spending a lot of time just trying to imagine the mechanics of all the riding, running, pig sticking, and jousting that was going on. And their escapes from these tricky situations rely just a bit too much on coincidence, luck, and deus ex machina.

However, I really enjoyed the way this book touched, ever so gently, a bit more on the love, the passionate love, between Holmes and Russell. A hint of tender hair-brushing foreplay, strong embraces....these have been missing from previous books. It wouldn't fit the style of the series to elaborate any further on their relationship, but these mere suggestions of romantic lover were quite satisfying. :-)

This is another of Laurie R. King's marvelous Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes novels, which doubles as a tribute to Rudyard Kipling's "Kim". Holmes and Russell are off to India, along a journey which proves rather richer in the satisfying Holmes/Russell interaction than some past novels have been. "The Game" also introduces many new and delightful characters, including the pert debutante Sunny Goodheart and the impish village boy Bindraji. The mystery plot is quite satisfying, with twists, turns, shifting alliances, and quite a bit of heart-thumping danger!

I do advise reading the series in order, though, beginning with "The Beekeeper's Apprentice." This allows you to best comprehend the development of the complex relationship between Mary Russell and her tutor/partner, Sherlock Holmes.

Laurie King, like her character Mary Russell, not only has a mind worthy of Sherlock Holmes, but also a spirit capable of bringing out the human side of the great detective. The Game takes Russell and Holmes to northern India, and finds them dealing with an Indian prince angered by British rule, as well as a believable acquaintance between Holmes and another major literary character. Anyone who finds Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes a little too cool for comfort should be delighted by Laurie King's Russell and Holmes.

I liked The Game, but I thought it could have been better. In my opinion, it's definitely not up to the the level of the first two books, which I think are the hands-down best of the series. It was a little disappointing, though still a good read.

It felt, to me, like it should have been longer by about 100 pages, most of that going into character development and the second half of the story that took place in India. The mystery seemed a little too simple. There were a lot of characters, which is not a bad thing, but a lot of them weren't fully developed and could have been used more successfully. There's also at least one unresolved plot element (those of you who've read it may have caught this-- the emeralds? Where did they go? We know from BEEK that they survived, yet there's no mention of sending luggage home or anything to explain where they went in between the time H & R leave the cruise ship and the beginning of BEEK.) Overall, it felt like the shadow of a greater work.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed the portion of the book dealing with Holmes' and Russell's time on the cruise ship. That was the best part of the book, definitely what I've come to expect. It just didn't go anywhere spectacular. The suspenseful action near the end was also good, and very entertaining. It would make a good general-audience movie, I think.

My main critique is that there seemed to me to be only one level to the story. In the past installments, there's been at least two, usually three or four levels to the story, creating an integrated whole, but in this one, the extra levels were fragmentary at best. This was a straightforward action-adventure, and there's nothing wrong with that, except in contrast with the more substantial novels in the series.

So, yes, this is an essential read if you're obsessed with the Mary Russell series, like me. But, no, this is not the best book you'll ever read.

This story is a beautiful epic, one that hints of hundreds of research hours and perhaps even weeks in India studying the setting. It's scope is impressive and the scenes move fluidly. There can be no doubt that Ms. King is an writer in control of her craft. Yet below the surface gloss, I found the story lacking a consistent and subtle purpose to its inextricable forward progress. Many of the characters seem oddly flat and the plot driven by reactions unrelated to the story line. For instance, a beam comes crashing down as Holmes and Russell walk through the marketplace in Aden, but the story finishes with no reason for it.
Just as Shakespeare has been criticized (in absentia) for allowing the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to hang on the absence of a letter due to an unrelated epidemic, in this book the master seems to leave her craft to chance - neglecting to rein in the story or have it all fold neatly together at the end of the journey. There is no final twist - no revelation so typical of the Russell-Holmes books. Instead the threads of the story are snapped off with a jest instead of an explanation. As such, the book hangs preciously between 'mystery' and 'novel'. There is no real mystery, and yet, without more character depth, it can not really be called a novel either. At the end of the day, regardless of the location, the real reason readers return to this series over and over again is to see the humorous, unique, intimate and sensitive portrayal of the Homles and Russell partnership. In this book, it is held almost entirely in reserve, to it's own discredit. As entertainment, I would highly recommend it, but I would definitely say to read "Oh Jerusalem" first, if you really want to see Ms. King flex her considerable talents.