I just completed The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King. This is the first in the series of novels about an elderly Sherlock Holmes and his young female apprentice.
I browsed across this book in the Pflugerville public library quite some time ago, and when I saw that it was about Sherlock Holmes, I checked it out for Katie who is a big Sherlock Holmes fan. Katie has since read all of Ms. King’s novels and takes part in an email list for fans of the novels.
It’s difficult to re-use an existing character–especially one so well known as Sherlock Holmes–but Katie thinks that Ms. King has captured the essence of Holmes quite well, even though she sets her novel thirty years after the original stories and gives him a female partner. I didn’t enjoy the novel as much as Katie–as the sexual tension and budding romance between Holmes and his companion didn’t do as much for me as it did for Katie, but I enjoyed the novel all the same.