Book Review: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Sorry for the lack of blogging here lately, school is almost over (1 day left!!!) so I have been super busy with assignments and even have an exam tomorrow, blah. Sorry to those of you who actually read this and are interesting my bookish thoughts, which I'm begininng to think is only my friend Sarah lol.

Anyway, I just finished Laurie King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice for my exam and thought it was a pretty good detective fiction. King takes on Conan Doyle's character of Sherlock Holmes and teams him up with a 15 year old girl named Mary Russell. Russell grows older throughout the novel and she soon becomes his apprentice in all things detection.

I'm a bit of a novel purist at times, so I had some issues with the idea of King writing the character of Holmes since it was a Conan Doyle creation and who can do it better than he can? Also, the characterization of Mary Russell at times was very late 20th century and I found that distracting since women obviously did not do certain things back then. I suppose this is the writer's choice and she does it willfully, but still, it was distracting.

I don't really read a lot of detective fiction, the only ones I have enjoyed in the past have been by J.D. Robb and Kathy Reichs. I can't say that after reading this novel that I will go out and read the rest of the series, of which there are quite a few appparently.

Grade: B+

Up next: MacGregor Brides by Nora Roberts