Thoughts of Holmes and Holmes
By a strange perchance, one of those little happenstances that pop up when we least expect them, I am currently reading two books (well one, a printed-on-paper book and the other on my Kindle) which feature a character surnamed Holmes. The first is Oliver Wendell Holmes, as one of the principals in The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl, in which the group of writers known in America as  
The Fireside Poets, are gathered round probably the best-known, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and are assisting him with the final translations of his homage to Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. And this is a Literary novel, set in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, featuring notable figures in the literary and academic world at Harvard. It is also a Murder Mystery, with a serial killer eviscerating prominent citizens in ways that are closely connected with Dante's work, and, it seems, either keeping apace with the translations being completed, or, indeed, just one step ahead – which provokes unease among the group, each wondering if one of the others could be the Lucifer stalking Boston's streets in the dark. And as the year moves towards Autumn, the nights begin to draw in, and we approach the season during which the novel is set, it begins to feel like an appropriate tale to be read by the fireside, while the air without chills and, perhaps sooner than we would wish, raindrops will turn to snowflakes. But I'm getting ahead of myself, perhaps because Winter nights and Pea-Soupers are associated with Sherlock Holmes, and he is one of the co-stars in The Bee-Keeper's Apprentice by Laurie R King which is my introduction to the series of books, ostensibly narrated as
 
an autobiographical memoir by Miss Mary Russell, who in her old age has sent a package of papers to Ms King, who functions as her editor. We meet Mary, as a 15 yer old girl who literally stumbles upon Holmes, now living in semi-retirement in a rural corner of the South Downs and everything else follows on. As an admittedly and unrepentant devotee of Conan Doyle's Holmes canon (I have tried the new Holmes with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman – both of whom I adore as actors – and it's nothing to with shortcomings on their part, but I just don't like the changes entailed in updating the stories and messing around with characters and dialogue: why turn an exchange between Holmes and Watson into another between Sherlock and Mycroft? I don't think I'm dyed in the wool, too long in the tooth, stuck in the mud or behind the times. I just don't feel there is a need to bring everything into the present day – Ripper Street is a good example of powerfully written and acted stories which exploit the locations, situations and characterisations available in the East End of the 1880s and 90s to great success and rightful acclaim. So, having just finished re-reading the Short Stories up to the Reichenbach Falls and the 'Death of Sherlock Holmes', and The Hound of the Baskervilles in my volume of the Long Stories, I was looking forward to something new – and was not disappointed. I now know that Laurie R King has written many more Memoirs of Miss Russell and her adventures with Mr Holmes, besides many other series of detective novels. I hope I will get a chance to read more – I want to read more, having become quite attached already to Mary and admiring of her abilities.