Laurie R. King

That’s right, the novel that juggles Sherlock Holmes, Gilbert & Sullivan, silent movies, the poet laureate of Portugal, Morocco, spies, thirteen young blonde actresses, and above all pirates, swashbuckles its way onto the shelves and (I hope!) into your hearts today.

Today’s blog post sees us, as Russell did, entering the town of Salé in Morocco,

where I went last year as part of the meticulous research for this book.

Salé, once the capital of the Barbary pirates that terrorized the Pacific, is now a quiet little town in the shadow of the more bustling city across the Bou Regreg river.

It being 1924, Russell and the others sail into the mouth of the Bou Regreg (don’t you just love that name?)  Then, as she says, “I allowed myself to be shepherded with the rest of the women-folk, piled into the boats, and rowed ashore.”

“…we were closely escorted through the narrow labyrinth of the town, zigging and zagging past weavers of mats and sellers of leather slippers, sidling around lengths of embroidery thread strung between a tailor and his child, admiring the heaps of red onions and trays of flat bread and buckets of glistening olives and heaps of fly-specked sweets,”

“passing under the reed-thatching that turned the streets into mysteriously dim tunnels”

“and by a hundred heavy nailed doors and house-fronts, their few windows high above street-level.”

A trip to Morocco is like a good novel: you are transported to an exotic land, one that teaches you things you never imagined—including things about yourself.

I hope you enjoy your voyage on Pirate King.

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For excerpts and events, take a look at the books page, here.  For a signed copy of Pirate King, check the events page for a list of stores where I’ll be over the next two weeks, or simply go to the Poisoned Pen shop, here.