About this item
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn the Riviera upside down to crack their most captivating case yet in the New York Times bestselling series that Lee Child called "the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today." It's summertime on the Riviera, and the Jazz Age has come to France's once-sleepy beaches. From their music-filled terraces, American expatriates gaze along the coastline at the lights of Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and sometimes hidden away. When Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive, they find their partnership pulled between youthful pleasures and old sins, hot sun and cool jazz, new affections and enduring loyalties. Russell falls into easy friendship with an enthralling American couple, Sara and Gerald Murphy, whose golden life on the Riviera has begun to attract famous writers and artists-and some of the scoundrels linked with Monte Carlo's underworld. The Murphy set will go on to inspire everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Pablo Picasso, but in this summer of 1925, their importance for Russell lies in one of their circle's recent additions: the Holmeses' former housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, who hasn't been seen since she fled England under a cloud of false murder accusations. When a beautiful young man is found dead in Mrs. Hudson's front room, she becomes the prime suspect in yet another murder. Russell is certain of Mrs. Hudson's innocence; Holmes is not. But the old woman's colorful past has been a source of tension between them before, and now the dangerous players who control Monte Carlo's gilded casinos may stop at nothing to keep the pair away from what Mrs. Hudson's youthful history could bring to light. The Riviera is a place where treasure can be false, where love can destroy, and where life, as Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes will discover, can be cheap-even when it is made of solid gold.
About the Author
New York Times bestselling crime writer Laurie R. King writes both series and standalone novels. For a complete list of her books in order, please visit http://www.laurierking.com/books/complete-book-listIn the Mary Russell series (first entry: The Beekeeper's Apprentice) , fifteen-year-old Russell meets Sherlock Holmes on the Sussex Downs in 1915, becoming his apprentice, then his partner. The series follows their amiably contentious partnership into the 1920s as they challenge each other to ever greater feats of detection. For a complete list of the Mary Russell books in order, click here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CJLA42C/kindle/ref=sr_bookseries_null_B00CJLA42C.The Kate Martinelli series, starting with A Grave Talent, concerns a San Francisco homicide inspector, her SFPD partner, and her life partner. In the course of the series, Kate encounters a female Rembrandt, a modern-day Holy Fool, two difficult teenagers, a manifestation of the goddess Kali and an eighty-year-old manuscript concerning Sherlock Holmes.The Stuyvesant and Gray books feature Harris Stuyvesant, a Bureau of Investigation agent who finds himself far out of his depth, first in England during the 1926 General Strike (Touchstone) , then in Paris during the sweltering confusion of September, 1929 (The Bones of Paris) . King also has written stand-alone novels--A Darker Place as well as two loosely linked novels, Folly and Keeping Watch--and a science fiction novel, Califia's Daughters, under the pseudonym Leigh Richards. King grew up reading her way through libraries like a termite through balsa before going on to become a mother, builder, world traveler, and theologian. She has now settled into a genteel life of crime, back in her native northern California. She has a secondary residence in cyberspace, where she enjoys meeting readers in her Virtual Book Club and on her blog. King has won the Edgar and Creasey awards (for A Grave Talent) , the Nero (for A Monstrous Regiment of Women) and the MacCavity (for Folly) ; her nominations include the Agatha, the Orange, the Barry, and two more Edgars. She was also given an honorary doctorate from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Check out King's website, http://laurierking.com/, and follow the links to her blog and Virtual Book Club, featuring monthly discussions of her work, with regular visits from the author herself. And for regular LRK updates, follow the link to sign up for her email newsletter.
