Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (Russell & Holmes, Book 11) [Hardcover]

Laurie R. King (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 6, 2011

In this latest adventure featuring the intrepid Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King takes readers into the frenetic world of silent films—where the pirates are real and the shooting isn’t all done with cameras.
 
In England’s young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. Nevertheless, at the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate rumors of criminal activities that swirl around Fflytte’s popular movie studio. So Russell is traveling undercover to Portugal, along with the film crew that is gearing up to shoot a cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King. Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, the project will either set the standard for moviemaking for a generation . . . or sink a boatload of careers.

Nothing seems amiss until the enormous company starts rehearsals in Lisbon, where the thirteen blond-haired, blue-eyed actresses whom Mary is bemusedly chaperoning meet the swarm of real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. But when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, Russell feels a building storm of trouble: a derelict boat, a film crew with secrets, ominous currents between the pirates, decks awash with budding romance—and now the pirates are ignoring Fflytte and answering only to their dangerous outlaw leader. Plus, there’s a spy on board. Where can Sherlock Holmes be? As movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves may experience a final fadeout.

Pirate King is a Laurie King treasure chest—thrilling, intelligent, romantic, a swiftly unreeling masterpiece of suspense.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brilliant and beautifully complex….Her descriptions of locales are voluptuous, and her continued delineation of the relationship of Russell and Holmes exquisitely portrays the eroticism of intellectual give-and-take.”  —Booklist (starred review)

“The Mary Russell series is the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”—Lee Child

“The great marvel of King’s series is that she’s managed to preserve the integrity of Holmes’s character and yet somehow conjure up a woman astute, edgy, and compelling enough to be the partner of his mind as well as his heart.” —The Washington Post Book World
 
The award-winning novels of Laurie R. King are . . .
 
“A lively adventure in the very best of intellectual company.”—The New York Times
 
“Erudite, fascinating . . . by all odds the most successful re-creation of the famous inhabitant of 221B Baker Street ever attempted.”—Houston Chronicle
 
“Intricate clockworks, wheels within wheels.”—Booklist (starred review)
 
“Imaginative and subtle.”—The Seattle Times

“Impossible to put down.”—Romantic Times
 
“Remarkably beguiling.”—The Boston Globe

About the Author

Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, and the acclaimed novels A Darker Place, Folly, Keeping Watch, and Touchstone. She lives in Northern California, where she is currently at work on her next novel.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; First Edition edition (September 6, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553807986
• ISBN-13: 978-0553807981
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (221 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #365,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

New York Times bestselling crime writer Laurie R. King writes both series and standalone novels.

In the Mary Russell series (first entry: The Beekeeper's Apprentice), fifteen-year-old Russell meets Sherlock Holmes on the Sussex Downs in 1915, becoming his apprentice, then his partner. The series follows their amiably contentious partnership into the 1920s as they challenge each other to ever greater feats of detection.

The Kate Martinelli series, starting with A Grave Talent, concerns a San Francisco homicide inspector, her SFPD partner, and her life partner. In the course of the series, Kate encounters a female Rembrandt, a modern-day Holy Fool, two difficult teenagers, a manifestation of the goddess Kali and an eighty-year-old manuscript concerning'Sherlock Holmes.

King also has written stand-alone novels--the historical thriller Touchstone, A Darker Place, two loosely linked novels'Folly and Keeping Watch--and a science fiction novel, Califia's Daughters, under the pseudonym Leigh Richards.

King grew up reading her way through libraries like a termite through balsa before going on to become a mother, builder, world traveler, and theologian.

She has now settled into a genteel life of crime, back in her native northern California. She has a secondary residence in cyberspace, where she enjoys meeting readers in her Virtual Book Club and on her blog.

King has won the Edgar and Creasey awards (for A Grave Talent), the Nero (for A Monstrous Regiment of Women) and the MacCavity (for Folly); her nominations include the Agatha, the Orange, the Barry, and two more Edgars. She was also given an honorary doctorate from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

Check out King's website, http://laurierking.com/, and follow the links to her blog and Virtual Book Club, featuring monthly discussions of her work, with regular visits from the author herself. And for regular LRK updates, follow the link to sign up for her email newsletter.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#92 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#92 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

229 of 232 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Is Sherlock Holmes on his way out of this series? September 3, 2011

By Maine Colonial TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I loved the first book in Laurie R. King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, and have read every book in the series as soon as it was published. I was delighted from the start of the series when the young bluestocking, Mary Russell, met up with Sherlock Holmes. Their partnership was filled with erudite and witty repartee, and they traveled the world together sleuthing in ingenious disguises and using elaborate ruses to escape peril.

But then something strange happened. King began separating Holmes and Russell. When this trend began, the books would describe each of the partners' doings, which were bookended with scenes of them together. Later on, though, their time together became strictly limited and Mary's separate role was emphasized.

Pirate King takes this trend even further. In this book, Holmes is entirely absent for a good two-thirds of the book and the pair are together for very few pages. I would estimate that scenes of the two of them together total only about 20 pages or so out of more than 300 pages.

Mary is persuaded by Holmes and Inspector Lestrade to go undercover as a director's assistant with Fflytte Films as they head to Lisbon and Morocco to make a silent film about Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. "How can there be a silent film about an operetta?," I hear you ask. It turns out the project is about a film crew trying to make a film about The Pirates of Penzance. The play-within-a-play conceit becomes ever more elaborate, as Mary works with actors playing the parts of pirates, constables, British officers and coquettish daughters, and many of the actors turn out to be something other than what they seem.

Mary's task is to see what she can find out about Fflytte Films that might explain why crime seems to follow its films in ways related to the subject-matter of each film, and why the previous director's assistant disappeared before the crew left England for Portugal. A series of minor disasters besets the cast and crew in Lisbon, but real danger begins as their sailing ship approaches north Africa. In this third part of the book, Holmes has joined the cast incognito, as an actor playing the Major General, and he and Mary must rescue the party from grave danger. This third part of the book, which takes up a little over 70 pages, has all the derring-do, action and spirit that are lacking in the rest of the book. It is cleverly written in a way that I could imagine as a script for a silent film adventure story.

I'm puzzled why Laurie R. King has altered this series to de-emphasize the Russell/Holmes collaboration almost to the disappearing point. Having so much of the book devoted to Mary working alone forced it into an awkward first-person narrative that reads like a well-educated and earnest young businesswoman's travel diary. I wasn't particularly interested to read in detail about her dealings on behalf of and with the cast and crew, her seasickness, rehearsal travails and the like. (And I'll admit I was a little miffed by Mary's scornful attitude toward my beloved Gilbert & Sullivan.)

Though the book returned to the series' old form at the end, I couldn't help noticing that the subjects of Mary's investigation were mere afterthoughts in the resolution of the story. It made me wonder about the utility of so many of the previous pages detailing Mary's sleuthing.

Has Laurie R. King come to feel so restricted by the Russell/Holmes partnership that she separated them? Is the weight of Sherlock Holmes's legendary persona so burdensome that she wants to cut him loose? She's the creator and, of course, she's free to do that. But I'm one of those pesky fans who don't like to see a change in a series' winning formula.

84 of 88 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Enormously disappointing September 8, 2011

By Stuart J. P. Spottiswoode

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am a lifelong Holmesophile and recently read all the Mary Russell novels. I heave enjoyed them all and reread them many times. Not only do the novels continue and develop Holmes as an immensely intelligent and humane observer of the human condition, but each novel has an interesting underlying theme. Justice Hall reflects on the impact of the 14-18 war on the English psyche, Locked Room meditates on how to deal with childhood trauma, The Moor evokes the archetypal strangeness of a wild and remote landscape. With humor, wit and reasoning thrown in who could not enjoy such a multi-layer literary cake?

In Pirates, Ms King has abandoned all this and appears to have chosen to write a completely dumbed down novel. Holmes and Mary Russell have each lost 40 IQ points. The plot is a farce, in both senses. It is as if she decided to write a screenplay for a summer tentpole movie where any trace of thought, complex ideas or character development has to be carefully expunged to leave something understandable by a four year old. The transition from the earlier novels is so gross, and the author so intelligent, that one feels this must have been a decision rather just a tired author throwing out the next in a series to garner some cash.

In short, if you enjoyed the earlier Mary Russell novels save your dollars and don't buy this one.

101 of 108 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An Adventure for Mary Russell (with Holmes) July 30, 2011

By Reader in Matawan VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Laurie King's Pirate King follows The God of the Hive: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes as the 11th story in the series begun by The Beekeeper's Apprentice: Or On the Segregation of the Queen/A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (Mary Russell Novels).

The Pirate King of the title is a reference to the Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan, a reference appropriate both in plot and motif. William S. Gilbert himself might have appreciated the ending, which mixes Gilbert's fairytale style with a mercantile Machiavellianism. It is much to her credit that Laurie King actually pulls it off. (Though some might disagree, the only part that seems implausible to me is the pace of those particular events.)

King's narrative is generally good and her descriptive skills a bit better. I found them actually moving in spots; others may disagree.

The story's weaknesses are the tangle of story layers necessary (a story about an adventure whilst filming a movie about the making of a play) and a certain formulaic feel to some of the Russell-Holmes scenes. One in particular has me wondering whether King lost touch with her characters or whether she is planning some future development. In my opinion, the best books in the series are the early ones that develop that relationship. At this point, it may be hard to sustain continued development, especially as King has castled Holmes queen-side, moving him well out of the reader's eye for most of the story.

Since the whole point of the series may have been to use Holmes as a launching-point for Russell, the stories may drift further and further from the Holmesian root. I think that a shame. I also think it a shame that Russell shadows Holmes so completely. The partnership of Russell and Holmes was a daring, outrageous stroke. It made the series in the beginning, and the forgetting of it may be the series's unmaking.