The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: Sherlock Holmes with a Twist
A few weeks ago I posted about my discovery (again, thanks to Dormouse) of mystery writer Laurie R. King. I started with the Kate Martinelli series (set in the present—or near-present—day) and have just completed the first of the Mary Russell series (set in the 1910s and 1920s and featuring Sherlock Holmes). It’s called The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (who knew that Sherlock Holmes had an apiary?), and it’s delightful.
From some point in her nineties, Mary Russell, born in 1900 to an American father and a Cockney Jewish mother, recalls her teen years, during which she met and learned from—and grew to love—Sherlock Holmes. When I say “love,” I don’t mean necessarily romantic love, though it seems from summaries of the rest of the books in the series that Russell and Holmes will indeed marry at some point. This love is a meeting of the minds, a partnership that is no less passionate for being intensely cerebral, and it is one that becomes deeply grounded in trust.
Okay, now I’ve made The Beekeeper’s Apprentice sound like a romance novel, which it isn’t. Nor is it exactly what many people would consider a mystery—the several crime-puzzles contained within the novel aren’t particularly complex or challenging as a “whodunit.” Nor are they meant to be. King, I would argue, is more interested in Mystery than in mysteries. Her novels trace the enigma of finding companionship in the midst of loneliness, of the healing of a soul.
And now I’ve made it sound like psycho-babble, which it isn’t, either. King’s writing is often hilarious, and the skilled construction of her sentences is a relief from less graceful or witty prose. She even has demonstrated the ability to write as well in third-person contemporary American language as in first-person 1910’s British language (albeit with a few unobjectionable anachronisms thrown in for effect).
But, anyway, back to the Mystery/mystery point. In a passage rather similar to some essays on King’s own web site, Russell says of the period during which she was studying theology at Oxford, “I did not think of myself as a detective; I was a student of theology, and I was to spend my life in exploration, not of the darker crannies of human misbehaviour, but of the heights of human speculation concerning the nature of the Divine. That the two were not unrelated did not occur to me for years.”
Yes. Good. I like that. Not only does knowing human sinfulness help us to understand God better, but, as when Holmes admires a criminal’s brilliant, if twisted, mind, we can also see the glory that God has planted in human nature. It’s kind of like the best of Calvinism mixed with the best of the Enlightenment.
King’s Holmes is rational to the core, but he is a good deal more vulnerable than the Holmes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I have to admit that I’m not that familiar with Doyle’s stories, though). He is retired, after all, and before Mary Russell stumbles (literally) upon him, he seems to be wearying of life. By the way, King’s Holmes is a little younger than the canonical one, which she addresses in the novel by having Holmes say that “Watson,” as his biographer, felt that his protagonist would be more respected if he were not quite so young as in real life. Thus, we have a Holmes who is in his fifties during the 1910s.
Russell (as she is called by Holmes) is a tomboy of sorts, but not in the clichéd way of much recent fantasy or adventure fiction. “Tomboy” is not the defining aspect of her personality, nor is “bookworm,” nor any other label that might be applied to her. The undercurrent of her traumatic past also helps to keep any easy stereotypes at bay.
Russell is also 5’11”, which allows her to carry off physical feats not possible for tiny Veronica Mars (Could Russell crawl through a dog door, though? I think not!). The Beekeeper’s Apprentice really made me think about how the physical is so often a key plot point in a story involving a female detective. Do we ever think so much about a male detective’s height or weight, and how it affects the story’s action? Discuss.
6 comments June 19th, 2007