Laurie R. King

"Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn the Riviera upside-down to crack their most captivating case yet ... It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Cãote d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins"--

A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

Riviera Gold

Sarah Sammis

Riviera Gold by Laurie R. King is the thirteenth mystery in the Mary Russell series. It follows on the events of Island of the Mad (2018) and The Murder of Mary Russell (2016). Mary and Sherlock, still masquerading as Sheldon Russell, have split up; Sherlock is off to Romania and Mary takes the offer to sail to Monaco from Venice.

Paige Morgan

After three months in lockdown, it is a delight to virtually escape from my living room to go to Monte Carlo with Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. This series has had its ups and downs, but has been on an upswing since the earlier "The Murder of Mary Russell," and I am pleased that its steadiness continues, and pleased that we get to see Mrs. Hudson again.

King has become well-practiced at blending detective stories, and gentle historical travelogues -- this time giving readers glimpses of an artistic community loosely settled in Monte Carlo. As the mystery progresses, readers also learn about the economic history of the principality of Monaco, the economic situation that a city like Monte Carlo would find itself in, and how that might influence relationships between the people who live there, and the tourists and emigrés who find themselves there. We also get a fascinating, and fairly detailed, discussion of the processes involved in sculpting bronze.

Holmes mostly takes a back seat to Russell's investigations, but it's nice to see the two of them working together, and we do get some of that; and I have hopes that the next volume in the series, set in Romania, will bring even more. I always miss King's Kate Martinelli series, but this was a charming diversion, and just what I needed to kick off the summer.

Riviera Gold A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

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