"It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the C�ote d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike ...
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"It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the C�ote d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins"--
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Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
From Venice to the Riviera, Living the Golden Life
This book starts out freewheeling and easygoing, as does the previous book, Island of The Mad, set in Venice, with many characters carried over, almost as a second volume. As Ms. King did with her duo The Language Of Bees/The God Of The Hive, giving us the story of Adrian Adler and his family.
But, Mrs. Hudson! And her correspondence initiates the contact, then adds her physical presence and renewed friendship with an old and valued friend of her youth. Wild and misspent youth, as it happens, which we sort of knew about. We get a few ...more...details, but mere hints. Tantalizing hints. A few interesting conversations between Mrs. Hudson and that friend.
Things start to darken, with the murder of an innocent, happy-go-lucky young man, with unexpected ties to all sorts of people. Well, perhaps not all that unexpected, actually, in as small a place as Monaco. And perhaps not all that innocent? And the sorts of people a smart woman should stay away from, or at least try to, strenuously. Smugglers, arms dealers, artists and sculptors, leading lights of the demi-monde, Bright Young Things, and lots and lots of White Russians, escaped from the shattered ancien regime of Tsarist Russia, bearing with them whatever scraps could be salvaged from the Bolshevik annihilation. Or maybe more than scraps? What did that banker to Nicholas II bring away?
But for me, the darkest, most interesting part is the relationship between Holmes and Mrs. Hudson. Or maybe, it's his attitude towards her. His seeming obsession with her, suspicion of her, his resentment, that she should shuck off the fetters he placed on her and resume her old, her real persona, with such ease, so quickly.
His need for control seems creepy and the dark side of Sherlock emerges, which we all knew of, but never saw so clearly. Not with Watson, whose personality is a simpler one than Hudson's.
In addition to the need for control, we seem to see a fear that she will make a fool of him, that Clarissa Hudson will prove to be another Irene Adler. Insupportable!
Mary also has suspicions, but as a woman and as a grateful supporter and adoptive stepdaughter of Clarissa Hudson's, she seems to be more willing than Holmes to keep an open mind, at least to a point. But to the point of murder?
The storytelling is, as always, a joy and a delight, sweeping us along willy-nilly. The evocation of Monaco so exact I had to immediately look it up on the Maps and in photos.
But, not all light and airy escapism. Some darkness, some depth, some things to think about.
And, a pretty cool description of how bronze is sculpted, poured and finished. Also, a rip-snorting finish, along with a sneaky feeling we haven't seen the last of Mrs. Hudson.
Thanks very much to Netgalley for the review copy, and apologies for the time it took. There were things in this book I had to think over and reread before I could find the words.
