The Moor (Collins crime) (Hardcover)

Long-time fans of Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, might think that their favourite sleuth met his fate at the hands of Dr Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Anyone who believes that, however, obviously hasn't read Laurie R King's delightful series featuring Holmes and his wife (!), Mary Russell. In The Beekeeper's Apprentice Holmes succumbs to the Oxford scholar's charms; now, in The Moor, fourth in the series, Holmes and Russell are summoned to Devonshire to solve a tin miner's mysterious death. Lonely Dartmoor provides plenty of opportunities for King to both relate the haunting legends of that part of the world and offer some amusing revisions to one of Holmes's most famous cases, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Though Holmes purists might resent the liberties taken with their hero, readers in search of a strong female protagonist, some fascinating local history, and spooky ambience will enjoy The Moor. --Amazon.com

Praise for Laurie King's Mary Russell series: 'Mary Russell combines the quirky intellect of her mentor with a modern modus operandi, and promises to be a heroine to contend with' Time Out A Monstrous Regiment of Women: 'Great fun, this, written in a high camp style that delights all the more for taking itself seriously' Michael Painter, Irish Times 'This is an entralling entertainment, profoundly serious in its exploration of the theological basis for feminism, and as rampantly exciting as a John Buchan tale. But since Ms King never quite takes her tongue entirely out of her cheek, it never overbalances into ponderousness' Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News The Beekeeper's Apprentice: 'King's novel is civilised, ingenious and engrossing. Best of all, it has heart. In contemporary fiction, whatever the genre, that's a rare commodity' Philip Oakes, Literary Review

Crime-writer Laurie R King writes two series of novels, the first set in California and the second in England, both of which have received prestigious awards. This, the fourth title in the second series, finds half-American Mary Russell tranquilly at work in 1920s Oxford on her latest theological project, blissfully unaware that her peace is to be shattered, not for the first time, by a peremptory summons to join her husband in some distant place - and at once. Mary, known socially and professionally by her maiden name, is irritated. It is only a month since she was allowed to return to the calm of the Oxford libraries. But she knows she must go, for although she loves her work her husband's is much more exciting - and the telegram has arrived from an intriguing source: Devon, where Sherlock Holmes is visiting an old, sick friend and where, more than 20 years earlier, he solved the mystery of the terrifying Hound of the Baskervilles. Could Dartmoor have spawned another strange creature to cause havoc - and worse - among the all-too-gullible residents of the Moor? Mary can't wait to find out, and to bring her own courage and scholarly powers to bear on the phenomenon. This is a very well-written, ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek take on the Conan Doyle stories, featuring a surprisingly uxorious Holmes and a fitting partner for him: affectionate, admiring, and prepared to suffer indignities, discomforts, life-threatening perils and permanently wet feet in the service of detection. Mary is the narrator, so we see Holmes and his work through her eyes, and the beauty and menace of the Moor through her eloquent words. The old friend they are visiting was a real person: the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, parson, writer and folksong historian. His descendants helped the author with her research, and the mix of reality, family recollection and fiction is beautifully balanced. (Kirkus UK)

King's have always been the most ambitious of all Sherlock Holmes pastiches (A Letter of Mary, 1997, etc.), and her fourth is no exception: She dares to meet the great man on the hallowed ground of Dartmoor, where he returns in 1924 with his wife, Oxford theologian Mary Russell, in response to the dying Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould's reports of flesh sightings of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Several locals swear they've seen traces of the Hound, or of the spectral coach of the legendary supernatural femme fatale Lady Howard, even before tin miner Josiah Gorton is found killed. Since Holmes and Russell split up for most of their investigations, he cuts a regrettably muffled figure; the real stars here are cranky real-life savant Bating-Gould (grandfather of Holmes "biographer" W.S. Baring-Gould) and the moor itself, evoked in fabulously atmospheric terms by Russell. And King not only provides a suitably generous array of things that go bump in the night, but supplies an explanation for all the skullduggery (whose dramatis personae include the brash American gold tycoon currently resident in Baskerville Hall, another illegitimate Baskerville scion, and a second murder victim) that's at least as ingenious and plausible as Conan Doyle's own. Despite the incursion of motorcars and electricity, what stays longest is the impression of the moor's brooding timelessness, as powerful now as back in 1902. (Kirkus Reviews)