Ms King is the Edgar award winning author of the Kate Martinelli series, an entirely pedestrian policewoman cycle, distinguished only by the fact that Martinelli is a lesbian.  In The Beekeeper's Apprentice she brings a feminist touch to the Sherlock Holmes mythos.  As I've mentioned before (see the Frankenstein review), the 19th century bequeathed us four iconic literary creations: Frankenstein, Dracula, Moby Dick/Ahab & Sherlock Holmes.  We see them revived over and over, most often with some cute modern twist (my personal favorite Holmes revivals: the Nicholas Meyer novel The Seven Percent Solution, wherein Sigmund Freud helps him with his cocaine addiction; the film They Might Be Giants, with George C. Scott as an insane? Holmes wannabe & Joanne Woodward as his psychiatrist/reluctant Watson; and the Magnum, PI episode with Higgins playing Watson to Patrick McNee's Holmes), but the characters are so strong that they survive most any mutilation and so this new treatment seems semi inevitable.

King has picked up the tale in 1915, with Holmes retired to his beehives in the Sussex countryside.  Into his life of seclusion stumbles a precocious teenage orphan girl named Mary Russell, who quickly proves to have a mind that is a ready match for Holmes.  They begin to solve crimes together and eventually, by this time Mary is attending Oxford, they run afoul of an archvillian who is intent on bringing about Holmes' demise.  Of course, this master criminal is also a woman.

King has picked up a double edged sword here; the mere presence of Sherlock Holmes (& Watson & Mrs. Hudson & Mycroft & Lestrade) virtually guarantees a decent tale (unless the author's a total butcher), but by choosing a figure who comes to us with such a weighty reputation & then trying to craft her own characters to set up as his equals, she has bitten off more than she can chew.  Unable to bring Mary up to the level of the Holmes of the Conan Doyle series, she instead brings him down to the level of her own character Mary Russell.  The result is a middling mystery, but one ends the book more than willing to read the future entries in the series.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (C) Orrin C. Judd

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