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Feb 02, 2012

Bonnie rated it:

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 More...

12 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 23, 2012

Hannah rated it:

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 s More...

17 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2011

Stephen rated it:

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...

0 comments like (24 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Trin rated it:

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 More...

17 comments like (23 people liked it)

Apr 25, 2008

Jessica rated it:

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 m More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2011

Kim rated it:

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 serie More...

7 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2010

Jon rated it:

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 (TN More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 23, 2009

Jessica rated it:

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!!

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2011

Becky rated it:

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 sto More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 26, 2007

Alice rated it:

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, More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2007

Jesse rated it:

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 chi More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2010

Rbrads2000 rated it:

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 bril More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 10, 2008

Elizabeth rated it:

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.

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Nov 07, 2008

Ed rated it:

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.

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2010

Lizzie rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Darcy rated it:

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.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2012

AnEyeSpy rated it:

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 happ More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 07, 2011

Bre rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 15, 2010

Hazel rated it:

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...

11 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2010

Sps rated it:

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 sim More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 14, 2010

Shelli rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 25, 2010

Tara rated it:

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 di More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2010

Janelle rated it:

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 s More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 24, 2008

Nicole rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 14, 2009

Ari rated it:

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.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 30, 2008

Kirsti rated it:

Sherlock Holmes meets a teenaged girl, argues with her, and ends up making her an apprentice. The book is not as silly as I'm making it sound in this summary, but it's also not as good as the Amazon reviews claim. The central mystery is not impressive. The novel is entertaining, but overall I preferred Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Mystery.

I'm amused that a minor character in Beekeeper's is named Jessica Simpson.

I enjoy Laurie R. King's writing style--which is More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 04, 2011

Zulfiya rated it:

It is actually three and a half read. It can boast a wonderful and extremely delectable language, a text spiked with allusions, and a character of Mary Russel a little less believable that Doyle's Holmes. All in all, it is a commendable input in the fanfic genre.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 10, 2009

Jenny marked it as to-read

This book is available as a free e-book until April 15, 2009 from the author's website.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 18, 2008

Chessa rated it:

This is part of my community's Everybody Reads program.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I loved the tone of the writing, the whimsy of it, the affection between Russell and Holmes, and Russell's amazing, tenacious (feminist) spirit. If I didn't know that this was the first of 8 books featuring Miss Mary Russell, I might be weeping right now from missing her character. The mystery was great and keeps the reader guessing and the culmination of it all doesn't leave one feeling cheat More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 08, 2010

Minh rated it:

I have more than a few kinks when it comes to novels and entertainment. By far, my largest kink is for Detectives. I love detectives and mystery series. If it has a detective or a solving aspect to it, chances are I'll give it a change.

Mary Russell starts off as an intelligent young 15 year old girl who by chance, befriends the now middle aged Sherlock Holmes. Holmes, having moved away from London is now a beekeeper, trying to enjoy life in the countrylife. Perhaps sensing how bored each other a More...

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