I’m involved with a fundraiser and program to help stop violence against women. First, there’s a Russell Basket. This includes a signed hardback of The Murder of Mary Russell, a copy of Dreaming Spies, and one of the gorgeous big Dreaming Haiku posters, all in a handsome Random House book bag. They’re requesting a $75 donation,…
Read MoreTwo weeks from today, the newest (and…last?) Russell memoir comes out. Since The Murder of Mary Russell reaches back into the Victorian era for portions of its tale, at a point we’re going to encounter a fairly young Sherlock Holmes. No, I’m not talking Spielberg, here but rather, the apparent undergraduate Dr Watson encounters in…
Read MoreThe Murder of Mary Russell not only dips into the past, it dips into other worlds from that of Mary Russell in the early 20th century. For example, the social whirl that is The Season: The Season, when the Names and would-be Names of the British Empire would gather in London, ran from midwinter until midsummer—…
Read MoreMurder will be on tour—or at any rate, its author will be—in just a few weeks. And because I’d hate for my faithful followers (that’s you) to get left out, I wanted to point out that some of the events are ticketed. A couple of these are venues that asked me and agreed to wait…
Read MoreBack before Christmas, I mentioned here that the Goodreads community were feeling out interest in a Beekeeper’s Apprentice “infinity scarf“. Well, it’s taken a while, but the good lady who makes the things has put up a sales link, for a limited edition, limited-time sale of the scarf. It is printed with the beginning of…
Read MoreIn The Murder of Mary Russell, we learn just how Sherlock Holmes came to inhabit the iconic Baker Street house where he and Dr Watson settled in before the fire with pipes and gasogene,newspapers and experiments, waiting for the knock from below that signaled a client. As Watson writes in A Study in Scarlet: We…
Read More“The Marriage of Mary Russell” publishes today–yay! In “The Greek Interpreter,” Watson is startled when his flat-mate Sherlock Holmes pulls an unsuspected brother out of his conversational pocket: It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the…
Read MoreIn the spirit of random celebration, let’s raise our glasses (or, screens?) to The Game. Why not? WE may all be looking forward to “Marriage” and Murder (in that order) but honestly, isn’t The Game one of your all-time favorite Mary Russells? It’s one of mine. So Team LRK (ie, me and my blood relations)…
Read MoreThe first entry has come in for this year’s contest: Bob chose the visual approach, and gives us his impression of Mary Russell’s headstone:Note the throwing knife and pipe at the stone’s top? Also his decision to obscure the date of our heroine’s death, althoughI will say the stone looks alarmingly…old. The contest closes March…
Read MoreIn “The Marriage of Mary Russell,” as the cover copy tells us: Mary Russell is delighted by Sherlock Holmes’ proposal of marriage. After all, they have become partners-in-crime, and she has recently come into her inheritance: what remains but to confirm the union with her mentor-turned-partner with the piece of paper? Russell’s pragmatic side tells…
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