If memory serves, I discovered Laurie King’s “Mary Russell” books from Diane Rehm’s “book group”. I’ve never read the Conan Doyle “Sherlock Holmes” mysteries (for some reason the Holmes character didn’t particularly interest me, perhaps because of the ham-handed way Star Trek: The Next Generation used the trope), but for whatever reason, the description of “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” fascinated me, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

This is my second time around re-reading the series, and they are perfect summertime companions. The central conceit of the books is that King was sent a trunk of various scraps and mementos, including a series of manuscripts of one Mary Russell, the young female apprentice and later wife of the famed investigator Sherlock Holmes. Holmes himself is quite different (given my impressions at least) from the character that Conan Doyle (and his followers) invented. Although still incredibly perceptive and ferociously intelligent, the Holmes character here is singularly focused and somewhat manic-depressive. Facing what he sees as an uninspiring future of solitude and research, he has retired to the Sussex countryside to tend his bees and retire from public life. Into his life literally walks Mary Russell, a young American orphan and Oxford student, still recovering from the circumstances that led to death of her entire family.

The two characters strike up an immediate if unlikely friendship. While the series follows their progressive adventures and intrigues in good mystery-novel fashion, there is also a continuing thread of the development of their relationship and marriage, and the events that threaten to dismantle their sometimes fragile partnership. This progression on two levels - intellectual and emotional - makes this a quite satisfying series. The books are set in the period during and immediately after The Great War, and King has a wonderful ability to evoke both the atmosphere of the period and the place.

Of the first three books in the series: “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice”, “A Monstrous Regiment of Women”, and “The Moor”, I find “The Moor” to be particularly delightful. Set in the Dartmouth region of the southwestern-most corner of England, the story is a continuation of the famous “Hound of the Baskervilles” tale. What I find so appealing about this book are two particular characters: The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, and the moor itself. Baring-Gould is a name that was familiar to me, as he is enormously published (he held forth on any topic that caught his attention, however briefly), and was famous for collecting the songs and lore of Dartmouthshire. As a result, several of his tunes are published in church hymnals, including the Presbyterian one. There’s an Advent tune in there I think.

I read “The Moor” for the first time while traveling in London and Ireland for my honeymoon in 2002, and so enjoyed the book that I was half-tempted to change our travel plans and go tromping down to the south-west, but I was certain my more practically-minded husband would have other ideas. But the book is such great fun, and King is so clearly in love with the place and Baring-Gould that I wanted to follow along.

The series continues with “O Jerusalem”, “Locked Rooms”, and “The Art of Detection”, which brings together the Mary Russels series with King’s contemporary Kate Martinelli series (and likely brings the latter series to conclusion). King was in Ann Arbor quite recently (alas! I did not know!) promoting her most recent book, “The Language of Bees”, which continues the Mary Russell series with the appearance of Holmes’ long-lost and previously unknown son.

These are great fun. I’m not at all a fan of the mystery genre, but these are for me a wonderful exception.