Part of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, book 9
First published 2009
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes return to their Sussex home after seven months away to find someone has stolen an entire colony of bees from Holmes's hives. The mystery deepens when Damian Adler arrives seeking help. Russell met this surrealist painter once before when he faced murder charges. Now Adler needs them to find his missing wife and child. The search pulls Russell into a web of madness that spans from Stonehenge suicides to a strange religious cult. She follows clues through the bohemian circles of London's Cafe Royal and into the dark history of a woman's past in Shanghai. Russell discovers she faces a killer more lethal than any in her previous cases. The danger grows when she realizes Holmes may be shielding this murderer for deeply personal reasons. The case forces Russell to confront the most painful failure from her husband's legendary career, a defeat that still wounds him and now threatens them both.
Genres: historical-fiction, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Sussex, London, Stonehenge, Shanghai
Period: 19th-century, 20th-century
435 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: violence