It might have been a matter of timing, or the way I experience the Sherlock Holmes canon, it might even be all Jeremy Brett’s fault. Or even Hugh Laurie’s. The fact is: I didn't really like The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

My three major reasons:

Mary
It’s been a long time since I come across such a Mary Sue. Her gifts just keep piling up at an incredible speed from the first moment we (and Holmes) meet her. I got the feeling that King simply chose a favorite literary crush and then projected her wish-f More...

Mary Russell, also known as The Beekeeper's Apprentice, proves to be a wonderful addition to the Sherlock Holmes mythos!

When 15-year-old Mary Russell almost tripped over the peculiar man while he was obsessively studying his bees, she never imagined such an accidental (and clumsy) encounter would change her life forever! But as it turns out, that man was semi-retired detective Sherlock Holmes, and when the precocious Mary is able to match wits with him (both with her deductive reasoning and her More...

4.5 stars

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If you’re in any way a fan of Sherlock Holmes, this book/series is a must read for you. I’m new to the world of Sherlock Holmes but I immediately loved him following his first book A Study in Scarlet and I desperately wanted to read more stories about him.

Sherlock Holmes is now a retired beekeeper residing in Sussex Downs. Despite the fact that he is retired, his mind is still just as sharp and he still assists the police in solving local More...

Rating Clarification: 3.5 Stars

It takes guts to mess with a canon as sacred to fans as the Holmesian one. It takes skill (and a healthy dose of respect) to do it well. Author Laurie King shows off all of these traits in abundance in her debut novel featuring famed and beloved master detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick John Watson Mary Russell. Yep, you heard me, Mary Russell: half American, half Jewish, 15 years old at the beginning of the story, and 100% Holmes' equal in spirit and intel More...

4.0 stars. I went through a lot of turmoil both in deciding to read this book and then while I was reading it. The Pre-read turmoil stems from the fact that while I have always liked the “idea” of the character of Sherlock Holmes, I have not always enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories that I have read. They have been a bit dry for my taste. However, I LOVED The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which took the character of Sherlock Holmes and put him in bizarre and unique surroundings (i.e More...

Sherlock Holmes pastiche/continuation/fanfic in which Holmes, retired to beekeeping in Sussex, is so impressed by the intelligence of 15-year-old feminist Mary 'Sue' Russell that he decides to take her on as his apprentice-detective. Wacky adventures ensue.

Okay. There were some good things about this book. King's prose is enjoyable enough, and her dialogue is suitably witty. The narrative is rather too episodic for my taste, but there are some nice atmospheric touches. And I like the idea of Hol More...

A witty, big-hearted book narrated by Sherlock Holmes's teenage apprentice-cum-partner, Mary Russell. It was a delight to be party to Russell and Holmes's verbal parrying and dry humor. Mary Russell is a heroine that would be hard not to love, with her unapologetic independence and rampant bookwormery.

The dialogue from both main characters is delicious. I love passages like this, after Mary asks Holmes if her presence is inconvenient (they do make an odd pair):

"To my considerable surprise, Russe More...

Since joining Goodreads I've discovered a taste for all sorts of books which I would have ignored only a year ago. Some books which I've read over the past few months have simply not come my way before. Others I have made a conscious decision at some point in the past not to read, but have changed my mind about, encouraged by positive reviews or a desire to participate in a group read.

This book falls into the second category. Years ago I read and enjoyed King's Kate Martinelli series (although More...

3.5 stars

Enjoyable variation on the Holmes theme. I discerned the major mystery and hidden mastermind behind it early (as I usually do), but missed the connection to the earlier mystery.

Characterization better than most mystery novels. I especially enjoyed the fugue of an intelligent deductive teenage woman (Mary Russell) juxtaposed with a retired bored (and lonely) Sherlock Holmes. The usual suspects cameoed: Mrs. Hudson; Dr. Watson; Mycroft; and, even Lastrade (TNG version).

I may continue wi More...

This book was recommended to me by one of my BFFs, Kati. I was not a mystery fan, but found the idea intriguing. About 20 pages in, I was hooked! Mary Russell rocks my face off. I can't say enough about this series. I am eagerly awaiting the next!!

This book is one that has been recommended to me by quite a few people... I probably would have never picked it up, having practically no interest in beekeeping myself (although I certainly do think that bees are important... SAVE THE BEES!), but people kept telling me to read this, read this, read this now! So, I finally got around to reading it, only to find that the expectations that I'd set for it actually hampered my enjoyment of this book.

I've only read one Sherlock Holmes story, the firs More...

This series (of which this book is the first) follows the exploits of a young woman called Mary Russell living in the earlier half of the twentieth century.

This books begins in 1915. Mary is an orphan living with her aunt, whom she doesn't get along with, in the English countryside. One day while wandering the Sussex Downs reading Virgil, she nearly steps on a man lying on the ground observing bees. His name is Sherlock Holmes.

King handles the inclusion of Holmes well, she even states that thi More...

I am by no means the most devoted of Holme's fans, though i do find him a very influential character on many newer characters I truly could not live without. So to that end, I could say I would be far less happy, literarilly(sp?), if Holme's had never existed.

Having said that you shall know to take my enthusiasm for this novel with a grain of salt, for I am biased in favor of the subject matter. Sherlock Holmes AND a strong female detective. Its like Laurie R. King is the love child of Sir Arthu More...

I listened to the Beekeeper's Apprentice audio book and thoroughly enjoyed it. The reader was excellent, Jenny Sterlin, which is of tremendous importance to stay interested. The book is about Sherlock Holmes, the Beekeeper, and his apprentice Mary Russell, a young and brilliant teenager who can keep up with and sometimes surpass Holmes and his extraordinary deductive mind and wit. They are both leading boring and uneventful lives until they meet. They are attracted to each other's rare brillianc More...

This is my favorite book in the world. All the books in the series are great, but this is the first and best. I could probably recite the first chapter without looking I've read the book so many times. It one of the books I'll carry around with me everywhere just to have Mary Russell's voice around.

Mary Russell is a smart, awkward, misplaced orphan who is living with her grumpy aunt on a farm, and she comes across Holmes, the detective in retirement, tending some beehives. Holmes finds in Mary Russell an unlikely intellectual equal, and the two of them form a partnership and a deep friendship that sees them through a variety of cases, and one in particular that puts their minds and their relationship to the test.

I'm not a die hard Sherlock Holmes fan (with the notable exception of the rece More...

Before DNA and CSI, there was Sherlock Holmes, and then here his bespectacled, tall, and blonde protege, the young Mary Russell. The beekeeping motif runs through their adventures in crimefighting and investigating. Engaging voice and superior writing lifts this a classic detective series.

I know I read some, maybe all, of the Holmes stories when I was a kid. My knowledge of Sherlock Holmes is mostly from the movies, though, including that unfortunate picture in which Basil Rathbone, I mean Holmes, fights the Nazis. (I just googled and there are three Holmes vs. Nazi movies, for god's sake.)

Anyway, this is a perfectly adequate mystery (and I'm deliberately damning with faint praise), but the book is more about the relationship between Holmes and Mary Russell than about the mystery More...

I'm not a mystery reader in general, and this book has been suggested to me over and over. Interesting take on the Holmes saga without really upsetting the Canon. Not entirely satisfied with the nemesis, though.

There's always room for ice-cream; it melts into the tiniest of cracks. So can this unhistorical dream filter into gaps you perhaps did not recognize, or forgot.
This is the most effective first-person narrator I have seen, instigates immediate identification. If you were a too smart, lonely gawky bespectacled teen, crash cost parental love, you cry every night, the adult responsible for your care provides hunger, cold, curses, swats, rejection ... Fall into this book.
You had a happy California More...

Mary was a great heroine to read the book through. She had a way of glossing over specific parts of the story but making me feel as though I wasn’t missing out on anything while she was doing it (I understand that a book further on in the series actually covers a ‘just touched on’ section).

Mary was a really fun narrator as she is obviously writing these memoires with hindsight so she is always putting in little things like ‘I wouldn’t find out why until years later’, which then makes me want to More...

I am so glad I bought this. I came THIIIIS close to leaving it with the huffy sigh of one who doesn't want to read anymore silly, cardboard box pastiches with cardboard cutout Holmes' vomiting up the basic principles and almost word for word deductions our dear Mr. Doyle set as the foundation. It gets so old, watching the same movie reel of the character, no evoultion, Watson, you ARE my Boswell, the game's afoot and tweny pages of unispired dialouge about a case that no one is even enthused abo More...

I haven't made up my mind about this. I wasn't a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and I'm somewhat suspicious of fanfiction, (a prejudice, of course). But King opens her story so sweetly that I can't resist. The Editor's Preface, the Author's Note are conceits, but charming conceits. And then,

I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defence I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very

More...

First, what it isn't: this is not a Holmes story in the Conan Doyle tradition. Nor is it as brilliant as its characters purportedly are. There's more telling and less showing than I'd like, and it comes off as a bit obnoxious and conventional. Conventionally obnoxious.

What it is: a mystery novel set in WWI/postwar England mostly Oxford, rural Sussex, and bits of London, with unabashedly brainy characters. The buildup to the central story is once kind of slow, for a mystery, and simultaneously f More...

This is a book for kick-ass girls who are brilliant, defiant, and strong. It's one of my favorites and encouraged me to buy the whole series, most of which is uniformly excellent. Mary Russell is a delightfully feisty creature and she takes the irascible Sherlock Holmes and turns him into a figure of endearment. I adore stories in which the protagonists are somewhat unlovable due to their own personal failings, and yet with whom you become enamored by the end of the tale. A great read, again and More...

What a great idea! The author has created a lady assistant to the legendary Sherlock Holmes. Mary Russell matches him in wit, smarts, and most likely surpasses him the looks department. They meet when she is 15 and he is 45 and the story begins...

My problems: A. The beginning is full of irrelevant stuff like her schooling and her participating in plays. B. It takes WAY too long for the book to reach the case talked about on the book flap. By the time I reached that point, I discovered my mind wa More...

I'm not a huge mystery fan but I try to expand my choices to many genres. This book was a classic type mystery. It's a story of young Mary Russell and how she comes to be an apprentice of the one and only Sherlock Holmes. They solve mysteries from a wife suspicious of her husbands illness, to a kidnapped American senators daughter, to a plot to kill both Holmes and Russell.

I have never read anything about Sherlock Holmes so I have nothing to compare this writing to. I liked it, but sometimes I t More...

I think I might have already said this about another book, but: this is my favourite book ever! :-)

Brilliantly written text, snappy dialogue, a very unique premise, and excellent storytelling make this entire series a pleasure to read. I have rationed them and save each book for a vacation or a special time - by doing so, I have made the series last maybe two years, but I'm almost done and will be sad to finish Locked Rooms.

The books take place in Sherlock Holmes' later years, after his brillian More...

This combination of mystery and companionship introduces Mary Russell as the new partner to the great Sherlock Holmes. This book had a great balance of humor and suspense so as not to bore the reader but to also not to keep it too serious. The characters too are very multidimensional.

Where has this book been all my life? This book is fantastic, you'll discover another side to S. Holmes you never know you liked. King has done an amazing job putting together these 'manuscripts'. 75% through and will be sad when it's done.