Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Biblical Scholar Takes on a Religious Mystic, 5 Feb 2006
A Monstrous Regiment of Women is the second novel in a series that features the female detective Mary Russell. In this volume Russell, who is an Oxford theology scholar, meets Margery Childe, a natural religious mystic, who is the charismatic leader of the Temple of God in 1921 London. Drawn together by their feminist leanings, and attracted to each other by their different approaches to the spiritual, these two women become close. Yet Mary becomes even more involved when rich women start dying in suspicious ways, and their wills show they are leaving large sums to the Temple.Mary has been a close friend to the retired Sherlock Holmes. Their meeting and early years together are described in the first volume of the series: The Beekeeper's Apprentice. He has been teaching her his skills as a detective. The Temple deaths become her first case. There is a subplot of romance as Mary and the elderly Holmes develop a sexual attraction towards each other. How they deal with it and how it transforms their professional and personal relationship is quite interesting. I have been a fan of another set of feminist mystery novels that features a female detective working with Sherlock Holmes, the Irene Adler series by Carole Nelson Douglas. Both series feature a feminist and assertively brilliant American woman with a strong personal career. While Mary Russell is a biblical scholar, Irene Adler is an opera singer. While Laurie King pits a teenage girl against a retired older Holmes, Douglas lifts right out of A Scandal in Bohemia a woman of his own age that Holmes was attracted to and weaves her novels around the existing Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Where Mary Russell is serious and Tom-boyish, Irene Adler is flamboyantly female. Yet both feel comfortable donning a male disguise in their work. Laurie King roots her novels in Mary's theological research which leaves little room for light humor. Douglas's series is much lighter with a minister's daughter playing it straight to Adler's theatrics. Mary Russell's close relationship with Holmes allows a lot more character development than does the more distant relationship between Douglas's married Adler and Holmes. Yet both series are delightful reads in their own ways.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An atmospheric and easy read featuring Sherlock Holmes, 12 April 2008
This is the second book in the series of Mary Russell novels and although I hadn't read the first book, 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice', it didn't really seem to matter.
Mary Russell is about to turn twenty-one and gain her inheritance and her freedom. She seems to follow a fairly unconventional life for a woman in Victorian England; frequently dressing as a young man and striding fearlessly into dangerous situations. She also has an unlikely friendship and working relationship with Sherlock Holmes who makes appearances throughout the book.
Mary is in London when she runs into an old university friend who takes her to 'The New Temple of God'; an organisation run by women who do charitable works for children and deprived women. It is there that she meets the charismatic Margery Childe. However, Mary's involvement becomes an investigating role, when several of the women involved with the temple are murdered.
I enjoyed this novel, it's light and atmospheric but I was hoping the Holmes would feature a bit more than he does. Still worth a read though.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Apprenticeship is over; Mary comes of age, 18 Aug 2006
Mary Russell is more or less on her own in this second adventure. At the ripe age of 21, Mary comes into her inheritance and through a friend, is introduced to the New Temple of God and its mystical leader, Margery Childe. Her feminism and theology fascinate Mary, but when a series of murders claim the lives of some of the Temple's wealthy young women, Mary begins to suspect something more is afoot. With Holmes' aid, Mary confronts a cunning and vicious killer. Nevertheless, the mystery plot is really secondary to story of Mary's coming of age after the events in King's superb Beekeepers' Apprentice. Mary must come to grips not only with her academic aspirations, but her relationship with Holmes. I can't help but be enthralled with King's smart writing and the unique voice of Mary Russell. But what I like most is that King knows when to make her heroine take charge, without making her an unrealistic action hero.
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