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O Jerusalem (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes) Paperback – April 28, 2009
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"Gentlemen, we are at your service." Thus Holmes greets the two travel-grimed Arab figures who receive them in the orange groves fringing the Holy Land. Whatever role could the volatile Ali and the taciturn Mahmoud play in Mycroft's design for this land the British so recently wrested from the Turks? After passing a series of tests, Holmes and Russell learn their guides are engaged in a mission for His Majesty's Government, and disguise themselves as Bedouins--Russell as the beardless youth "Amir"--to join them in a stealthy reconnaissance through the dusty countryside.
A recent rash of murders seems unrelated to the growing tensions between Jew, Moslem, and Christian, yet Holmes is adamant that he must reconstruct the most recent one in the desert gully where it occurred. His singular findings will lead him and Russell through labyrinthine bazaars, verminous inns, cliff-hung monasteries--and into mortal danger. When her mentor's inquiries jeopardize his life, Russell fearlessly wields a pistol and even assays the arts of seduction to save him. Bruised and bloodied, the pair ascend to the jewellike city of Jerusalem, where they will at last meet their adversary, whose lust for savagery and power could reduce the city's most ancient and sacred place to rubble and ignite this tinderbox of a land....
Classically Holmesian yet enchantingly fresh, sinuously plotted, with colorful characters and a dazzling historic ambience, O Jerusalem sweeps readers ever onward in the thrill of the chase.
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBantam
- Publication dateApril 28, 2009
- Dimensions5.18 x 1 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100553383248
- ISBN-13978-0553383249
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“Inspired.” —Chicago Tribune
"Fascinating...[King has] stepped onto the sacred literary preserve of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, poached Holmes, and brilliantly brought him to life again...a standout."—Washington Post Book World
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Holmes stiffened first, then Steven's oars went still, and finally I too heard it: a distant deep thrum of engines off the starboard side. It was not the boat we had come on, but it was approaching fast, much too fast to outrun. Steven shipped the oars without a sound, and the three of us folded up into the bottom of the skiff.
The engines grew, and grew, until they filled the night and seemed to be right upon us, and still they grew, until I began to doubt the wisdom of this enterprise before it had even begun. Holmes and I kept our faces pressed against the boards and stared up at the outline that was Steven, his head raised slightly above the boat. He turned to us, and I could see the faint gleam of his teeth as he spoke.
"They're coming this way, might not see us if they don't put their searchlights on. If they're going to hit us I'll give you ten seconds' warning. Fill your lungs, dive off to the stern as far as you can, and swim like the living hell. Best take your shoes off now."
Holmes and I wrestled with each other's laces and tugged, then lay again waiting. The heavy churn seemed just feet away, but Steven said nothing. We remained frozen. My teeth ached with the noise, and the thud of the ship's engines became my heart-beat, and then terrifyingly a huge wall loomed above us and dim lights flew past over our heads. Without warning the skiff dropped and then leapt into the air, spinning about in time to hit the next wave broadside, drenching us and coming within a hair's-breadth of overturning before we were slapped back into place by the following one, sliding down into the trough and mounting the next. Down and up and down and around we were tossed until eventually, wet through and dizzy as a child's top, we bobbled on the sea like the piece of flotsam we were and listened to the engines fade.
Steven sat up. "Anyone overboard?" he asked softly.
"We're both here," Holmes assured him. His voice was not completely level, and from the bow came the brief flash of Steven's teeth.
"Welcome to Palestine," he whispered, grinning ferociously.
I groaned as I eased myself upright. "My shoulder feels broken and--oh, damn, I've lost a boot. How are you, Holmes?" It was barely two weeks since a bomb had blown up just behind him as he stood tending a beehive, and although his abrasions were healing, his skin was far from whole.
"My back survives, Russell, and your footwear is here." Holmes thrust the boot at me and I fumbled to take it, then bent and pulled it and the one I had managed to hold on to back over my sodden woollen stockings.
"Why don't they put more running lights on?" I complained.
"Troop ship," explained Steven. "Still a bit nervous about submarines. There're rumours about that some of the German captains haven't heard the war's over yet. Or don't want to hear. Quiet with the bailing now," he ordered. Taking the oars back in his hands, he turned us about and continued the steady pull to shore.
The remaining mile passed without incident. Even with the added water on board, Steven worked the oars with a strong, smooth ease that would have put him on an eights team in Oxford. He glanced over his shoulder occasionally at the approaching shore, where we were to meet two gentlemen in the employ of His Majesty's government, Ali and Mahmoud Hazr. Other than their names, I hadn't a clue what awaited us here.
Looking up from the bailing, I eventually decided that he was making for a spot midway between a double light north of us and a slightly amber single light to the south. Swells began to rise beneath the bow and the sound of breaking waves drew closer, until suddenly we were skimming through the white foam of mild surf, and with a jar we crunched onto the beach.
Steven immediately shipped his oars, stood, and stepped over the prow of the little boat into the shallow water. Holmes grabbed his haversack and went next, jumping lightly onto the coarse shingle. I followed, pausing for a moment on the bow to squint through my salt-smeared spectacles at the dark shore. Steven put his hand up to help me, and as I shifted my eyes downward they registered with a shock two figures standing perfectly still, thirty feet or so behind Holmes.
"Holmes," I hissed, "there are two women behind you!"
Steven's hand on mine hesitated briefly, then tugged again. "Miss Russell, there'll be a patrol any minute. It's all right."
I stepped cautiously into the water beside him and moved up to where Holmes stood.
"Salaam aleikum, Steven," came a voice from the night: accented, low, and by no means that of a woman.
"Aleikum es-salaam, Ali. I hope you are well."
"Praise be to God," was the reply.
"I have a pair of pigeons for you."
"They could have landed at a more convenient time, Steven."
"Shall I take them away again?"
"No, Steven. We accept delivery. Mahmoud regrets we cannot ask you to come and drink coffee, but at the moment, it would not be wise. Maalesh," he added, using the all-purpose Arabic expression that was a verbal shrug of the shoulders at life's inequities and accidents.
"I thank Mahmoud, and will accept another time. Go with God, Ali."
"Allah watch your back, Steven."
Steven put his hip to the boat and shoved it out, then scrambled on board; his oars flashed briefly. Before he had cleared the breakwater, Holmes was hurrying me up the beach in the wake of the two flowing black shapes. I stumbled when my boots left the shingle and hit a patch of paving stones, and then we were on a street, in what seemed to be a village or the outskirts of a town.
For twenty breathless minutes our path was hindered by nothing more than uneven ground and the occasional barking mongrel, but abruptly the two figures in front of us whirled around, swept us into a filthy corner, and there we cowered, shivering in our damp clothing, while two pairs of military boots trod slowly past and two torches illuminated various nooks and crannies, including ours. I froze when the light shone bright around the edges of the cloaks that covered us, but the patrol must have seen only a pile of rubbish and rags, because the light played down our alley for only a brief instant, and went away, leaving us a pile of softly breathing bodies. Some of us stank of garlic and goats.
The footsteps faded around a corner, and we were caught up by our guides as rapidly as we had been pushed down in the first place, and swept off again down the road.
This was the land my people had clung to for more than three thousand years, I thought with irony: a squalid, stinking village whose inhabitants were kept inside their crumbling walls by the occupying British Expeditionary Forces. The streets of the Promised Land flowed not with milk and honey but with ordure, and the glories of Askalon and Asdod were faded indeed.
The third time we were pushed bodily into a corner and covered with the garlic- and sweat-impregnated robes of our companions (neither of them women, as close proximity had quickly made apparent, despite the cheap scent one of them wore). I thought I should suffocate with the combined stench of perfume and the nauseous weeks-old fish entrails and sweetly acrid decaying oranges that we knelt in. We were there a long, long time before the two men removed their hands from our shoulders and let us up. I staggered a few steps away and gagged, gulping huge cleansing lungfuls of sea air and scrubbing at my nose in a vain attempt to remove the lingering smell. Holmes laid a hand on my back, and I pulled myself together and followed the men.
We covered perhaps six miles that night, though barely three if measured in a direct line. We froze, we doubled back, we went in circles. Once we lost one of the dark robed figures, only to have him rejoin us, equally silently, some twenty minutes and one large circuit later. With his reappearance we changed direction and started a straight run, inland and slightly north, which ended when I came up short against the back of one of them and he, or his companion, seized my shoulders, spun me around, tipped my head down with a hand like a paw, and shoved me through a short, narrow doorway into what felt like a small cave, clammy with cold and holding a variety of odd (though for a change not unpleasant) smells.
I was completely blind, and stood still while at least two people moved around me, closing doors and what sounded like window shutters, rustling gently (their feet, I suddenly realised, had always been nearly noiseless) until the man behind me spoke a brief guttural phrase in a language I did not know, and in front of me a match scraped and flared, outlining a shape as broad as a monolith. The bright match dimmed, and when he stood upright to shake it out the light that remained was gentle and warm, like a candle--or, I saw as he turned towards us, a small oil-fed wick burning from a pinched clay bowl.
I spared no attention for the light source, however; my eyes were on the two men as they moved across to a corner of the room, shrugged their outer garments on a rough table, and turned to face us.
I was prepared, of course, for the two men to be Arabs, given their names, clothing, and the Moslem greeting back on the beach, but when I saw the reality of my companions in this tiny space it was a good thing I had Holmes with me, because I might otherwise have bolted for freedom: we had been dropped into the hands of a pair of Arab cutthroats. Their dark eyes and swarthy faces were nearly hidden between their beards and the loose headcloths they wore. The younger man was dressed as a dandy, if one can picture an Oriental dandy with curling moustaches, long bead-tipped plaits around his face, kohl encircling his eyes, and smelling of flowery scent, with an ornate curved scabbard stuck through the left side of his belt and a pearl-handled revolver on the right. A heavy gold watch on his wrist showed the wrong time but echoed the gold thread of the thick cords that held his headcloth in place, and the crimson colour of his boots matched the red in the flamboyant embroidery that ran up the front of his long waistcoat. The other man was older and more conservatively dressed--or rather, the colours of his garments were quieter, the embroidery more subtle. He wore the usual long-skirted Arab robe, although he too had both knife and gun (a long-barrelled Colt revolver). His face was bisected by a scar that tugged at his left eye and continued down into his beard; the younger man was missing two of his front teeth, which when he spoke revealed a slight and oddly sinister lisp.
I had lost a cousin two years before in the town north of here, cut down along with one of his children when the Arab inhabitants had risen against their Jewish neighbours, massacred a number of them, and driven the remainder from their homes. I did not want to be in the same room with these menacing individuals, much less dependent on them for food, drink, and instruction for the next six weeks.
Holmes seemed quite oblivious. He studied his surroundings as he unbuttoned his damp woollen jacket, peeling it off stiffly along with his haversack and dropping them both onto the rough bench that slumped against one wall. He turned to the men. "I do hope you are satisfied," he said in a low drawl. "I imagine we shall have sufficient demands on our energies in the next few days without your continuing with these little games." The two Arabs did not react, although their gazes seemed to sharpen somewhat. "Which of you is Ali Hazr?"
The younger, more colourful man tipped his head briefly to one side. "And you are Mahmoud Hazr?" Holmes asked the other. The stocky older man with the scar lowered his eyelids briefly in confirmation. "I am Sherlock Holmes, this is Mary Russell. Gentlemen, we are at your service."
His generous offer did not seem overly to impress the two Arabs. The brothers looked at each other for a moment of wordless communication, then Ali turned his back on us and went to the back corner of the tiny room, where he dropped to his heels and began to assemble a handful of twigs and sticks into a small fire. Holmes opened his mouth, and then I could see him make the decision to shut it: Mycroft had chosen these men, and we had to trust that they knew what they were about. They had worked hard enough to get us here undetected; they would not light a fire if it was not safe.
I glanced over at Mahmoud, and found his black eyes studying Holmes with a mingled look of amusement, approval, and speculation. When he felt my gaze, his face closed and his eyebrows went down, but as he turned away I decided that, Arab cutthroat or no, the man was not unaware of subtle undercurrents.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked Holmes. His English was clear, though heavily accented.
It was Holmes' turn to assume a stony expression. "There is nothing the matter with me."
Ali gave a brief bark of what must have been laughter. "Some movements pain you," he said, "and you flinched when I pushed on your shoulder. Are you injured or just old?"
It was, I had to admit, a valid question under the circumstances. Evidently Holmes too decided that the men had a right to know with what they were being saddled.
"I was injured, two weeks ago. It is merely the remnants of sensitivity."
Ali sighed deeply and returned to his fire, but the answer seemed to satisfy Mahmoud. He walked over to the makeshift table leaning against the wall and bent to a heap of bundles that lay beneath it, coming up with a fringed leather pouch about the size of two fists. This he shook once, to attract Ali's attention. The younger man looked up, and the two shared another brief wordless conversation before Ali shrugged and reached around the fire for an object like a giant's spoon, a shallow pan with a long handle, which he placed on top of the burning sticks before standing and moving away from the fire corner. Mahmoud took his brother's place at the fire, dropping to his heels and pulling open the drawstring of the leather pouch. He plunged his hand in, came up with a handful of pale grey-green beans, thumbed a few of them back into the bag, and then poured the rest into the skillet. It appeared that we had earned the right to a cup of coffee.
Holmes had already warned me that in Arab countries, coffee-making was a long, drawn-out affair. We sat in silence watching Mahmoud's utterly unhurried motions, swirling the beans across the pan. The small green dots changed colour, grew dark, and finally began to sweat their fragrant oil. When they were shiny and slick and nearly burnt, Mahmoud picked up a large wooden mortar and with a flick of the wrist tipped the contents of the coffee skillet into it, spilling not a single bean. He set aside the skillet and took up a pestle, and began to pound the beans. At first the coffee crackled crisply under the pestle and tumbled back into the bottom of the mortar, but gradually the sound grew soft, and a rhythm grew up, the pounding alternating every few strokes with a swipe at the sides, where the coffee clung. The resulting sound was like a cross between a drum and a bell, quite musical and curiously soothing.
Eventually the coffee was reduced to a powder, and Mahmoud set the mortar and pestle to one side and reached for the incongruously homely English saucepan of steaming water that Ali had set to boil, filled from a skin hanging off the rafters. Picking up the tallest of three long, thin brass coffee-pots, he poured the ground coffee into it, followed by the steaming water. After a minute he skimmed off the foam and allowed the coffee to subside, then poured the mixture into a smaller pot with the same shape. He added a pinch of spice, stirred and skimmed it again, and finally poured the tar-like coffee into four tiny porcelain cups without handles that nested in the palm of his hand. It was unlike any Turkish coffee I had ever tasted, fragrant with cardamom and thick enough to spoon from the cup.
After the ceremonial three cups, we ate, tearing pieces of a flat bread, cold and tasting of raw flour despite being flecked with burnt bits, using the pieces to scoop, spoon-like, into a communal pot of some sort of spiced and mashed pulse or bean, also cold. It was a makeshift meal, but it served to fill our stomachs, and its completion seemed to mark a degree of acceptance on the part of our hosts. They wiped their fingers on their robes, cleared the cups and empty bowl to one side, and proceeded to pull out a couple of beautifully embroidered tobacco pouches and roll themselves cigarettes. Holmes accepted Mahmoud's offer of the pouch, papers, and a glass of cold water; they were not offered to me, but I declined as if they had been, and waited impatiently for the male tobacco ritual to reach a point where speech was acceptable. Eventually, the silent Mahmoud looked at Ali, who seemed to feel the glance and take it as a signal because he immediately reached into the front of his robe with his left hand and took out a thumb-sized knob of soft wood. His right hand went to his chest and drew the heavy, razor-honed knife from its decorated scabbard, and to my surprise he proceeded to use the unlikely blade to whittle delicately at the bit of wood. After a few moments, his cigarette bobbing dangerously close to his black beard, he paused in his carving and raised his eyes to Holmes.
"So," he said. "Do you mind telling us what you are doing here?"
Product details
- Publisher : Bantam; Reprint edition (April 28, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553383248
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553383249
- Item Weight : 12.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.18 x 1 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #235,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,128 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Books)
- #2,950 in Historical Mystery
- #8,530 in Women Sleuths (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
New York Times bestselling crime writer Laurie R. King writes both series and standalone novels. For a complete list of her books in order, please visit http://www.laurierking.com/books/complete-book-list
In the Mary Russell series (first entry: The Beekeeper's Apprentice), fifteen-year-old Russell meets Sherlock Holmes on the Sussex Downs in 1915, becoming his apprentice, then his partner. The series follows their amiably contentious partnership into the 1920s as they challenge each other to ever greater feats of detection. For a complete list of the Mary Russell books in order, click here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CJLA42C/kindle/ref=sr_bookseries_null_B00CJLA42C.
The Kate Martinelli series, starting with A Grave Talent, concerns a San Francisco homicide inspector, her SFPD partner, and her life partner. In the course of the series, Kate encounters a female Rembrandt, a modern-day Holy Fool, two difficult teenagers, a manifestation of the goddess Kali and an eighty-year-old manuscript concerning Sherlock Holmes.
The Stuyvesant and Gray books feature Harris Stuyvesant, a Bureau of Investigation agent who finds himself far out of his depth, first in England during the 1926 General Strike (Touchstone), then in Paris during the sweltering confusion of September, 1929 (The Bones of Paris).
King also has written stand-alone novels--A Darker Place as well as two loosely linked novels, Folly and Keeping Watch--and a science fiction novel, Califia's Daughters, under the pseudonym Leigh Richards.
King grew up reading her way through libraries like a termite through balsa before going on to become a mother, builder, world traveler, and theologian.
She has now settled into a genteel life of crime, back in her native northern California. She has a secondary residence in cyberspace, where she enjoys meeting readers in her Virtual Book Club and on her blog.
King has won the Edgar and Creasey awards (for A Grave Talent), the Nero (for A Monstrous Regiment of Women) and the MacCavity (for Folly); her nominations include the Agatha, the Orange, the Barry, and two more Edgars. She was also given an honorary doctorate from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific.
Check out King's website, http://laurierking.com/, and follow the links to her blog and Virtual Book Club, featuring monthly discussions of her work, with regular visits from the author herself. And for regular LRK updates, follow the link to sign up for her email newsletter.
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Imagine my pleasant surprise when I recently did a search for the book only to discover an entire series of 17 books (this doesn't include the e-books!). So I delved into ordering my own books in the series. I'm now on a limited income and researched my options carefully.
I've stated this multiple times when writing a review on my book purchases: I'm always pleasantly surprised by the used books. Only once in the past 20 years did I get a book that was so badly written in that I wrote a negative review and had to toss the book away. (I received a refund, but felt lied to by the seller and never purchased from them again.)
Here's where I admit that I had an issue with the book order. Unclear to my, I didn't realize that all the books were coming from different locations. Two days ago, I'd received most of the book order. The books were in wonderful condition and look great with the others in the series I'm collecting. However, something was amiss. I contacted the seller twice (yesterday) to let them know that three (3) books were missing. Late in the day when my mail arrived, the missing books arrived.
I was unable to reach out to the seller yesterday to correspond with them that the missing books had arrived. Today, I found an email direct from the seller letting me know that the books were coming from different locations. Also was a note that if the books didn't show up soon, contact them immediately via the info attached to the email. Wow! Same day reply from the seller is a new experience for me! In the past when I've reached out to other sellers if I've had issues with an order, it's at least 3-7 days to get an acknowledgment, let alone help in locating missing items. This was a pleasant surprise!
The order from this seller is now complete. I don't have the entire series yet. Still waiting from my other resources. Once I get the set, I will dive into this series, known to some as the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series.
Yes, I said that right. Laurie R. King has written many books over the years. I know her more by this series of books some refer to as the Mary Russell books. The character, Mary Russell, goes into a quiet countryside and stumbles-literally!-into a beekeeper. The date is 1915. Mary is young teenager, roughly 15 years of age. The beekeeper she runs into is non other than the master sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, who has "retired" to a calm, rural area. Eventually this duo begin looking into their own mysteries together. The series takes Russell and Holmes across several continents over many years. Although these sleuths begin their time together in the book, "The Beekeepers Apprentice," Mary's story begins in "Mary's War," which starts in 1910.
If you like mysteries, if you want to get away from newer stories loaded with 21st-century technologies, and you'd like to step back in time, this is the series for you. Do your own research on this series online. Laurie R. King has her own website that lists the titles of the books and the dates the stories take place. Each book are stand alone stories. But for those of us that don't like to say "good-bye" to our favorite characters after one book, you may like this series.
The testing that Russell and Holmes go through in this book make the changes in the characters when they return to London in the first book realistic. I admire the writing craft as true to the individual plot and true to the development of the characters during the series. I'd love to sit down and talk to the author about this book.