Castle Shade, by Laurie R. King

Castle Shade is the 17th installment in Laurie R. King’s series about an aging Sherlock Holmes and his much younger wife Mary Russell. I’ve read them all (though haven’t reviewed all of them here on the blog) and they are pretty reliably enjoyable, particularly as King finds a new and interesting location for pretty much every book. During the events of Castle Shade, Holmes and Russell have canonically been detecting partners for 10 years and married for 5, so with 17 novels in that time span, they rarely get a break from murders and other mysteries.

This latest installment finds the pair in Romania, where we get an introduction to the fascinating historical character of Queen Marie of Romania, and her Castle Bran, which some people think is (but almost certainly was not) the inspiration for Dracula’s castle in Bram Stoker’s novel. Strange things have been happening at Castle Bran, and while the very logical Holmes and Russell are not likely to fall for tales of vampires and witches, they have some investigating to do to find out what’s actually happening.