The Tainted Cup & A Drop of Corruption
I have not read much Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m pretty sure I read Hound of the Baskervilles when I was a teen, and maybe A Study in Scarlet? But I’ve never been an aficionado.
Which makes it all the stranger that I have consumed a lot of Holmes adaptations. The Downey Jr films; the Cumberbatch show; Enola Holmes, The Irregulars, and even the not-very-good Holmes & Daughter. And then there’s the books. I have read many of the Laurie R King Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes books; I pine for the next in Malka Older’s Mossa & Pleiti series. Which brings me to Robert Jackson Bennett.
I had not heard of these books until the Hugo packet this year. And when I started The Tainted Cup I was a bit dubious, because I really haven’t been in the mood for gung-ho fantasy complete with made-up words for quite a while. But I persisted, because the characters were intriguing enough that I wanted to see what they were up to. And then the world grew on me – an empire shoring itself up against incursions from mindless oceanic leviathans (one assumes? I can’t tell whether that is going to get undercut later in the series), and one key way they do that is by changing some of its citizens: to have better reflexes, or more acute senses, or… other things.
And it didn’t take long for me to realise that Din and Ana are Watson and Holmes analogues. He is new to the justice job, struggling to find his place. She is weird, with bursts of manic energy and a delight in music and a desire of illegal drugs and an astonishing ability to put clues together. I mean, it’s not exactly subtle. And it’s an absolute delight. And you don’t need to know about Holmes and Watson to enjoy their interplay – it’s just an added amusement – because Bennett writes compelling characters and intriguing mysteries, and develops a world that stands by itself.
In fact I enjoyed The Tainted Cup enough that then I went and found A Drop of Corruption at the library, and I read it in a day and I have no regrets about that. Interestingly, the library has catalogued it as a mystery – I can only imagine what someone would think if they picked it up expecting something like Thursday Murder Club or a James Patterson. Anyway, it’s another gripping mystery in another part of the empire, and we learn more about how the empire works (and it’s not completely a “we love empire” story, either), and – happily – we finally learn a bit more about Ana, whose role and being are themselves mysterious. I assume Bennett has plans for more Din and Ana; certainly I will continue to read them.
Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy
Read courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, it’s out in May.
The Peter Pan/Sherlock Holmes mash-up I didn’t know I needed.
I’m a big fan of taking old stories – especially well-loved ones – and either putting women in, or re-telling the women’s stories to give them more agency, or just flat-out actually making them a character rather than sexy (or maternal) lampshades. Here, Murphy gives life to Mary Darling: wife to George, mother to Wendy, John, and Michael – and previous inhabitant of Neverland, courtesy of Peter Pan. She grew up in Cooktown, Qld; is the niece of Dr John Watson; and is generally awesome.
The story is partly Mary’s story, as she goes off to find her own children – recognising all the signs, as she does, of a Peter Pan abduction – and partly Watson’s story, as he (along with Holmes) follow in Mary’s wake to try and find Neverland. Along the way there are adventures, including other Victorian lady adventurers, and brothel-keepers, and several pirates. There’s also flashbacks to Mary’s childhood, as well as to the experiences of various members of the party: Sam, a South-Sea Islander friend from Mary’s childhood; some of the pirates; the people who become known as Princess Tiger-Lily and her family; and George Darling himself.
Murphy has made Barrie’s (and Conan Doyle’s) much richer by restoring the women and people of colour who would really have existed in London, let alone the rest of the world, to the story. She’s also written a zippy tale of adventure and family and identity that kept me completely enthralled.
Holmes does not come out of this story very well. Nor does Peter Pan. I was naturally reminded of AC Wise’s Wendy, Darling, which is a very different book but likewise asks questions about exactly who, or what, Peter Pan could possibly be.
This was brilliant. Loved all of it.
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
Things I have not read: Sherlock Holmes stories.
Things I only read occasionally: mystery or crime novels.
Things I have read a lot in the last three months: Laurie R King’s Mary Russell series. Ten books and several short stories, in fact.
This is all because of a friend who suggested the series to me while I was travelling (also the Amelia Peabody series). I decided I needed something a bit light, and I thought it would be interested to give it a go… and all of a sudden I’d read two novels and a novella. And it went from there.
Mary Russell is 15 in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice; orphaned and living with a nasty aunt in Sussex. She literally runs into an older man out looking at bees, and he turns out to be a now-retired Sherlock Holmes. She demonstrates a surprisingly keen mind, he is intrigued, she ends up being his apprentice, they have adventures, and so the series sustains itself.
Russell is an heiress, so there’s no money issues (at least once she inherits); she’s Jewish; she’s very bright, obviously – and gets a degree in theology; and she is, clearly, a match for Holmes in terms of personalities. I can’t speak to how well Holmes is portrayed, but there are amusing references to his being annoyed at Conan Doyle, and the way Watson wrote their adventures up.
To some extent I guess you could call this extended fan fiction. Especially when you have Peter Whimsy turn up briefly, and then Kim (Rudyard Kipling’s Kim), and Dashiel Hammett, and for all I know other characters that I didn’t recognise. But… who cares?
Overall the stories are well-written; they’re definitely page-turners. Sometimes the crimes are dreadful, sometimes they’re on the more intimate side; sometimes Russell and Holmes are personally involved, sometimes they get dragged in. The stories start in 1915, and I’m up to 1924 (where I’m going to pause for a long time, I think; I’ve about done my dash for now), so there’s discussion of blue-stockings and women under 30 not yet having the vote, and King keeps the misogyny and some of the racism that would have been par for the course at the time – which does get a bit uncomfortable at times, it must be said, and I’m sad she felt it necessary.
Overall these are entertaining stories that aren’t too demanding. Perfect for right now, as far as I’m concerned.
Randomly Yours, Alex 