reading list

The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

A strange thing happened when I was reading this book. Goodreads sends status updates to my Twitter account, so when I told the site I was 68 pages into this book, it sent out a tweet to say that. The tweet was seen by the author of the book who sent me a message to ask if this was the first of her books that I had read.

The twitter account is set up as a Mary Russell account - the main character in the books. I didn’t initially notice this. I think she was mid-change to this set-up because I remember the photo as that of an older lady. I could be thinking of her Goodreads page: I honestly don’t remember.

I replied and said something about how it had been recommended to me by a friend who didn’t read fanfiction. I would have been interested in a discussion about how the heck she got this story line past the Conan Doyle estate as I thought they were terriers at protecting their Holmes.

I got the idea when she replied that she was not a fictional character and then I continued with what I hope sounded like a Holmsean line that it was mere logic; she was fifteen in the books in 1915, therefore she had to be 114 years old in 2014 and was probably dead. She replied with a plural ‘we’ that neither of them were dead.

Now, it is the ‘we’ that stops me. Holmes is already an old man in her books. If Mary is 114, Holmes must be over 160!

I am literally 68 pages into the first book of a thirteen book series and she has just let out a huge spoiler. Both Mary and Holmes are alive.

Maybe I should assume that, given there are thirteen books in the series? Or maybe not. Maybe Holmes dies in book one and Mary goes on to have a great career as an observant detective? And she is the detective in the rest of the series.

But whatever the reason, it stopped me in my tracks.

And I can’t read any more of the story.