Next week, her new Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes suspense novel, Garment Of Shadows hits bookstore shelves. It's the twelfth entry in the immensely popular series about the aging, but still brilliant and vigorous detective, and his smart, simpatico younger bride and companion in adventure. It's also the fourth Russell-Holmes novel in a row in as many years.
Hot on the heels (or perhaps the stern) of last year's rollicking Pirate King, the new novel eschews that novel's salty, serio-comic hijinks on the high seas for something completely different: amnesia. Scant days after separating from the movie crew in Morocco at the end of the last book, Mary wakens with a throbbing head, with blood on her hands, in a strange room dressed in men's robes—with no earthly idea who she is.
As a variety of handy skills come instinctively to her—climbing out windows, scaling down walls, reaching automatically for weapons long since taken off her, stealing food and coins (and above all, the instinct for self-preservation)—she makes her way into a teeming marketplace. She recognizes that she is within the walled part of the city (or medina) of ancient Fez, the second largest city in Morocco. But what she is doing there, and how—and to whom—she is to return home again are for the reader and Mary herself to find out.
Laurie King will be at the Capitola Book Cafe on Wednesday, September 5, at 7:30 pm, to read and sign copies of Garment Of Shadows. Or, you can catch her later at Bookshop Santa Cruz, Friday, September 14, at 7:30 pm.
In the meantime to get in the proper mood, check out Laurie's Pinterest page (that's one of her images, above), all abloom with the exotic colors, food, spices, tiles, and cats of Fez!
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