The God of the Hive
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Series: Russell & Holmes #10
Published by: Bantam Books
Release Date: 2011
Pages: 384
Overview
Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, have stirred the wrath of a murderous secret organization bent on infiltrating the government. Now they are separated and on the run, wanted by the police, and pursued across the Continent by a ruthless enemy with limitless resources and powerful connections.
Unstoppable together, Russell and Holmes will have to survive this time apart, maintaining contact only by means of coded messages and cryptic notes. But has the couple made a fatal mistake by separating, making themselves easier targets for the shadowy government agents sent to silence them?
A hermit with a mysterious past and a beautiful young female doctor with a secret, a cruelly scarred flyer and an obsessed man of the cloth: Everyone Russell and Holmes meet could either speed their safe reunion or betray them to their enemies—in the most complex, shocking, and deeply personal case of their career.
Praise
"Using short chapters and wielding her virtual pen like a burnished sword, King allows readers to race through this gloriously complex second half of last year’s Language of Bees….How Mary, Holmes, and Mycroft solve [their] conundrum—usually while separated from one another—is delineated in resplendent prose. The nascent and rocky development of air travel and international telephone lines; the effect of a winsome and intelligent child on perhaps overintellectual adults; descriptions of locales and places via scent, texture, and color—all of it makes for utterly absorbing reading."
—Booklist (starred)
God of the Hive was named one of Booklist’s 101 Best Crime Novels of the Past Decade
Links
Read Laurie’s thoughts on writing The God of the Hive on her blog, Mutterings.
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Discussion Guide
Download The God of the Hive reading group guide
Excerpt
Two clever London gentlemen. Both wore City suits, both sat in quiet rooms, both thought about luncheon.
The younger was admiring his polished shoes; the older contemplated his stockings, thick with dust.
The one was considering where best to eat; the other was wondering if he was to be fed that day.
One clever man stood, straightening his neck-tie with manicured fingers. He reached out to give the silver pen a minuscule adjustment, returning it to symmetry with the edge of the desk, then walked across the silken carpet to the door. There he surveyed the mirror that hung on the wall, leaning forward to touch the white streak—really quite handsome—over the right temple before settling his freshly-brushed hat over it. He firmed the tie again, and reached for the handle.
The other man, too, tugged at his tie, grateful for it. The men who had locked him here had taken his shoes and belt, but left him his neck-tie. He could not decide if they—or, rather, the mind in back of them—had judged the fabric inadequate for the suicide of a man his size, or if they had wished subtly to undermine his mental state: The length of aged striped silk was all that kept his suit trousers from tumbling around his ankles when he stood.
