This holiday season, why not create a lasting memory by curling up under your Christmas tree with a good Christmas book? Whether you’re enjoying a mug of hot cocoa in your favorite reading nook or in front of the fire, there’s nothing quite as comforting and Christmassy as snuggling up with a festive holiday read!
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
I am about a third of the way into Laurie R. King’s The Murder of Mary Russell, the fourteenth installment in her Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes series. Though I have not read the other books in the series, it appears that so far this one is deviating from typical plot structure – there has yet to be a murder or any appearance by Sherlock Holmes, and instead we are taken on a deep dive into Mrs. Hudson and her mother’s history.
There has so far been very little to do with the main plot of Mary Russell having been ambushed and possibly kidnapped. Despite the title of the book, it seems unlikely that Mary Russell will actually be murdered as three more installments in the series follow this one. It will be intriguing to see how this story progresses!
Trust was a snare, safety a delusion; together they led to blood drying upon the floor.
Laurie R. King, The Murder of Mary Russell
Summary
Russell and Holmes have become one of modern literature’s most beloved teams. But does this adventure end it all? Mary Russell is used to dark secrets—her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond.
And what of the other person to whom Mary Russell has opened her heart: the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell’s faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s son.
What Samuel Hudson tells Russell cannot possibly be true, yet she believes him—as surely as she believes the threat of the gun in his hand. In a devastating instant, everything changes. And when the scene is discovered—a pool of blood on the floor, the smell of gunpowder in the air—the most shocking revelation of all is that the grim clues point directly to Clara Hudson.
Or rather to Clarissa, the woman she was before Baker Street.
The key to Russell’s sacrifice lies in Mrs. Hudson’s past. To uncover the truth, a frantic Sherlock Holmes must put aside his anguish and push deep into his housekeeper’s secrets—to a time before her disguise was assumed, before her crimes were buried away.
There is death here, and murder, and trust betrayed.
