Random House will release a “Beekeeping for Beginners”, a new Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes story by Laurie R. King, on July 6, 2011. Part of the pre-release publicity for King’s The Pirate King, the e-novella re-examines the meeting and early days in the relationship between Holmes and his young protege, Mary Russell, told this time from Holmes’s point of view. You can read more about the story here. If you’re on Facebook, you can also read a post by Laurie King about the writing/editing process for the novella. Sadly, the
Meanwhile, The Pirate King is due out on Sept. 6, 2011. Purported to be somehwat lighter in tone than the two-novel mystery involving Druidic sacrifice, surrealistic art, the Green Man, and Holmes’s son Damian (The Language of Bees and God of the Hive) the new novel centers around a silent film production of The Pirate King, based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta The Pirates of Penzance. As a long-time G&S fan as well as a Russell-Holmes fan, I can hardly wait!
Incidentally, I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I’ve read all the Russell/Holmes novels to my daughter (now in high school.) She loves them; more than that, King’s version of Sherlock Holmes has become for her the definitive Holmes. And to be honest, he has for me as well.
