PLEASURE CRUISE

Acclaimed Corralitos mystery writer Laurie R. King has shepherded her husband-and-wife detective team through some dark, sobering themes in her last couple of books—religious fanaticism, moral corruption, even human sacrifice. Her latest novel, Pirate King, takes another tack entirely. For this eleventh outing in her popular mystery series, King places her intrepid heroine, Mary Russell, and her equally redoubtable husband, Sherlock Holmes, smack in the middle of a witty, lighthearted romp of an adventure involving the early days of the silent film industry, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and, of course, pirates.

King combines the usual scholarship, travelogue, feminism and skullduggery readers have come to expect from her Russell-Holmes mysteries with swashbuckling on the high seas and a healthy dose of absurdist hilarity—along with the ever-deepening affection and camaraderie between Russell and her much older, yet still vigorous spouse. The combination is just about irresistible. Fans can get a taste of this tall tale when King reads from her new novel next Tuesday, September 20, at Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Pirate King begins with Russell craving nothing more than a few weeks of leisure among the books and bees at the Sussex cottage she and Holmes share. Instead, she is invited by Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard to insinuate herself into the employment of a London motion picture company that appears to be leaving a trail of mayhem in its wake. Maddeningly encouraged by Holmes, and fearing the imminent arrival of Holmes' alarming brother, Mycroft, for an extended visit, she reluctantly takes the assignment. (Read more)

(Laurie King will read from and sign copies of Pirate King Tuesday, September 20, at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 7:30 pm.)

WHEN RUSSELL MET HOLMES

Oh, the audacity of Laurie King.

In only her second novel, The Beekeeper's Apprentice (1994), she had the nerve to tinker with one of the greatest legends in all of mystery fiction. The beekeeper in question was Sherlock Holmes, a greying, but no less acute and acerbic man in his mid-fifties retired to a country cottage on the Sussex Downs ca. 1915 to raise bees, under the watchful eye of his faithful housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson.

His apprentice-to-be was a 15-year-old orphan from a neighboring cottage who was about to enter Oxford University. This precocious youth was independent, analytical, fiercely intelligent—and female. Her name was Mary Russell. Holmes, along with King's soon-to-be-legion of readers were pleased, if astonished, to recognize an intellect as fine, prickly, and impatient as Holmes' own, and the young woman was glad to rise to the challenge of his tutelage.

Over the course of King's popular mystery series, Russell and Holmes (as they always refer to each other, comrade-style) have become not only best friends and partners in wit and detection, they are plausibly married as well. That Russell embodies the generation of "new" women rising phoenix-like out of the ashes of the war-ravaged Old World adds another subtle layering to the delicate balance of their relationship as they strive for common ground and equal footing.

Many of their adventures have been dark, indeed. But in her new novel, Pirate King, the eleventh outing in the series, King combines the usual scholarship, travelogue, feminism and skullduggery readers have come to expect with swashbuckling on the high seas and a healthy dose of absurdist hilarity. The combination is just about irresistible! Fans can get a sneak preview when Laurie reads from her new novel this Thursday (September 8) at Capitola Book Cafe, 7:30 pm.

(Above: UK paperback cover for The Beekeeper's Apprentice, looking very Erte!.)

PIRATE KING PREVIEW

Want to get in the mood for Laurie King's new Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes novel, The Pirate King? Here's the new trailer for the book recently posted on Laurie's site, full of atmosphere, wry wit, and of course, pirates!

Btw, how hysterical is it that movie-style trailers are now made to sell books? It's totally appropriate in this case; Laurie's book is about the silent movie industry, and this trailer incorporates plenty of vintage B&W pirate movie footage to provide the necessary action. (Even in trailer form, the point of a moving picture is to move.)

So long as you have a plot dripping with intrigue, an irresistible character or setting, or some other hook that can be effectively exploited, visualized, and sold in a 2-minute trailer, you're good to go in the brave new world of book promotion.

Meanwhile, not only authors and other creative artists, but their characters and/or subjects are now required to have a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. It's one thing to discover a FB presence for historical figures like William Shakespeare, King Henry VIII, or the Plantagenet Edward II (who has an active Wall full of pics and comments, even though he's been dead since 1327). But fictional characters are swarming all over social media like bees on Holmes's hives.

I discovered this with a vengeance when I posted a blog about the Disney cartoon feature Tangled last December—in which I riffed on how Disney princesses and their heroes (in this case, Rapunzel and her rascally thief-turned-hero Flynn Rider) have evolved over the decades. Within a couple of months it had more hits on this site than anything else I'd ever posted. I couldn't figure out why until I followed a couple of links backward to their sources and discovered that Flynn Rider, has his own thriving Facebook page, complete with cocky updates from the virtual man himself, and swooning pre-teens (one assumes) writing mash notes on his Wall. Who knew? These days, real-life reality is just another option (and not a very popular one) on the massive virtual smorgasboard.

PIRATES, POSTERS, & KINGS (OH, MY)

This kills me. Santa Cruz's own Laurie R. King has written a pirate novel!

Or, at least, her new novel, "The Pirate King" (due out September 6), places King's brilliant detective series heroine, Mary Russell, and her husband, Sherlock Holmes (no slouch himself when it comes to solving mysteries), behind the scenes in the silent movie industry during the making of a pirate swashbuckler, ca. 1924. Bookshop Santa Cruz will be hosting a reading by King on Tuesday, September 20. In the meantime, check out King's website for details about the 10 weeks of piratical shenanigans and contests she's holding during the run-up to publication day.

One of the contest prizes is a copy of this fabulous faux movie poster being used to advertise Laurie's book. (It's not the book jacket cover, but a separate promo item.) This image is based on a classic Howard Pyle illustration, but the whole concept harks back to the glory days of silent movie posters.

Of course, pirates and silent movies are two of my favorite subjects. I especially love the idea that (according to the preview on Laurie's website) the maniacal filmmaker in her book gets involved with real pirates to lend his film authenticity. This makes perfect sense if you know anything about the early days of silent filmmaking. In particular, the superb 13-part video series by Kevin Brownlow, Hollywood, documents the outrageous DIY spirit of intrepid movie pioneers who were making up the rules as they went along. (If the script called for a fistfight on the wings of a biplane, for instance, they sent two actors up in a biplane with a camera strapped on the wing.)

The most famous pirate movie of the silent era is The Black Pirate, starring the inimitable Douglas Fairbanks. By 1926, Fairbanks was such a huge star, he got name-above-the-title billing on the poster art; his buoyant athletic brio was always the soap his movies were selling.

But according to the strict moral code of the era, a pirate couldn't be a hero, so when Fairbanks, the most popular actor in Hollywood, wanted to make a pirate picture, he had to play a disguised nobleman who joins the pirate crew for a "noble" reason—to avenge himself on the scurvy dogs who caused his father's death. Through this device, Fairbanks got to have all the fun of playacting the pirate life without tarnishing his heroic image.

This is an all-Fairbanks production: he wrote the script (under his alias, Elton Thomas) and sketched out every shot before a director even came on board. He revels in plundering every pirate cliche in the canon, from buried treasure to walking the plank. And in one of the most memorable of all silent movie stunts, he climbs out on a yard, plunges his knife into the top of the sail, and slides all the way down to the deck by grasping the handle as the blade slices the sail in two. Yowza! Don't try this at home, kids. (Read more)

Meanwhile, other silent filmmakers were pillaging all the same source material that later became vehicles for Errol Flynn and his swashbuckling brethren in the talkies. The most famous of Flynn's pirate movies is a gritty and rousing adaptation of Rafael Sabaini's Captain Blood, made in 1935. (Arguably, by me, the best pirate movie ever made.) But there was also a lavish silent version, starring one J. Warren Kerrigan, made in 1924.

Only about half an hour of footage from this film exists today. But this cool poster remains. It's unusual for a pirate movie in that it features no ship, no sea, no Bounding Main; it's all about mood and tension. I just love that looming shadow figure. This poster tells you: prepare to be thrilled!

Apparently, this early version of The Sea Hawk (also produced in 1924), stuck far more closely to the original Sabatini novel than the more famous Errol Flynn/MGM version made in 1940. Milton Sills stars as an Elizabethan sea captain framed for a crime and sold into slavery to the Spanish; when Muslim corsairs eventually board his ship and free him, he renounces Christianity and transforms himself into the Algerian pirate, Sakr-el-Bahr—The Hawk of the Sea.

This was obviously a plot point that wouldn't wash in 1940s Hollywood. But this terrific poster conveys all the lush Eastern exoticism of Sabatini's tale.

Robert Louis Stevenson's evergreen pirate classic, Treasure Island, got the silent treatment in 1920, from French-born filmmaker Maurice Tourneur. (Father of Jacques Tourneur, who became a Hollywood film director of note in the '40s.) True to its era, this film featured a female actress in the role of boy-hero Jim Hawkins. More intriguing, the great Lon Chaney was on board as eerie pirate, Blind Pew, who gets innkeeper's son Hawkins involved in the pirate plot. (A couple of stills exist of Chaney in costume for the role, but the film itself is lost.) But this poster doesn't care about the stars; it's selling a rip-roaring, boy's own pirate adventure!

Setting down Russell and Holmes in the midst of all this lively ferment as the movies struggle to invent themselves sounds like a brilliant idea to me. Me timbers are shiverin' already!