Justice Hall

Hey, our old friend Justice Hall is on special e-book offer now, $2.99 from my friendly neighborhood Bookshop or Nook or Kindle. The sun did not shine on Justice Hall so much as Justice Hall called forth the sun’s rays to fall at such and such an angle. We did not look upon it; rather, it invited…

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Califia’s Daughters: women rule

This past weekend, a lot of women (and yes, men) came together to reiterate their commitment to the sort of fair behavior that is not being found in our government. As my minor contribution to this discussion, my publishers agreed to put into special offer a book I wrote some years ago in which most…

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Mary & Sherlock, the Christmas War

As BookBub may have told you, there’s a special deal on the US e-book of Mary Russell’s War— As you probably know, Russell’s War would be an ideal present for this time of year since there are two, yes two, Christmas stories. One is about Russell’s childhood memories, and the other is all the way…

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Bundling Russell & Holmes

There’s a bundle of Russells, waiting to slip into your e-reader or cell phone: It’s probably inevitable that the first book in any series is the biggest seller, even if readers loved it. Confronted with a list of a dozen titles, people tend to skip over numbers two through ten or so, I suppose because…

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A Young Mr Holmes

Two weeks from today, the newest (and…last?) Russell memoir comes out.  Since The Murder of Mary Russell reaches back into the Victorian era for portions of its tale, at a point we’re going to encounter a fairly young Sherlock Holmes. No, I’m not talking Spielberg, here but rather, the apparent undergraduate Dr Watson encounters in…

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“Marriage” and–which “artist Vernet”?

“The Marriage of Mary Russell” publishes today–yay! In “The Greek Interpreter,” Watson is startled when his flat-mate Sherlock Holmes pulls an unsuspected brother out of his conversational pocket: It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the…

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THE GAME for all (US) players

In the spirit of random celebration, let’s raise our glasses (or, screens?) to The Game. Why not? WE may all be looking forward to “Marriage” and Murder (in that order) but honestly, isn’t The Game one of your all-time favorite Mary Russells? It’s one of mine. So Team LRK (ie, me and my blood relations)…

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Sherlock Holmes: his people

In “The Marriage of Mary Russell,” as the cover copy tells us: Mary Russell is delighted by Sherlock Holmes’ proposal of marriage.  After all, they have become partners-in-crime, and she has recently come into her inheritance: what remains but to confirm the union with her mentor-turned-partner with the piece of paper? Russell’s pragmatic side tells…

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The Tiger of Beachy Head

Quite a bit of “The Marriage of Mary Russell”— —takes place on the South Downs, particularly that portion of it to which Sherlock Holmes retired after the death of Queen Victoria, a few miles from where Mary Russell stumbles across him in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Holmes’ earlier biographer, Arthur Conan Doyle, had little interest in…

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Marriage before Murder

“The Marriage of Mary Russell” started, as many of my more interesting projects seem to, with a conversation with my editor. Was there by any chance, she asked, a short story I’d like to write? One that Random House could use as an e-short, during the build-up to The Murder of Mary Russell, to tease new…

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