O Jerusalem (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #5) by Laurie R. King

O Jerusalem (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #5) Reviews

• 
  Anika

  I started reading this series loving them, but I have to say they are getting more and more disappointing. The characters are still the highlight, but King is having a worse and worse time with plots - this one felt so unresolved that I literally checked to see if there had been pages ripped out to explain what had just happened. I did like the descriptions of Palestine and the nomadic life of Holmes and Russell, but King's attention seemed to be so focused on that that the mystery element totally went by the wayside. And that's a problem, in a mystery novel.
  On a side note, as a Holmes fan in general, his magical skills of deduction seem to be going away. I don't know if King isn't up to the labyrinthine and ingenious logic plots that Conan Doyle had in spades, or if she's just not interested, but there is hardly one per book, and if there is, all the deductions are unexplained. Worse, sometimes Holmes seems to miss things that are incredibly obvious to the reader (in 'The Moor', he deduces that a man who clearly possesses a great deal of gold spent time in the California gold rush, when he was actually in the Alaska one, which might have been tipped off by the clue that the man has TERRIBLE FROSTBITE SCARS). Messing with Holmes in the first place is ambitious, but I think I speak for many Holmes fans when I say that you can mess with his personal life or his romantic life, but don't you dare mess with his intellect.
• 
  Louise Chambers

  What I'm beginning to learn about this series is that, while King has based these books on Sherlock Holmes, the series itself is in Mary Russell's voice and is about her.
  This may be why, in reading some reviews of this book, and some others in the series, that some readers may be disappointed, or even perhaps peeved, that these books do not echo Conan Doyle's writing and plotting style, and indeed, do not use Holmes' voice to drive the story along.
  Why is this a good thing? Because we can see, through the maturing character of Mary Russell, living through one of the most tumultuous and rapidly changing eras of civilization, an era when women finally begin to break free of societal conventions and strictures that have held them back for eons, how one young woman of deep faith, strict ethics, and broad scholarship, comes to be one of the most celebrated detectives, and the life-love of the curmudgeonly Holmes.
  Russell becomes Holmes' Queen Bee, and yet retains her ability to fly as free as female worker bees do. Russell breaks out of the Victorian mold and manages to "seduce" Holmes to accompany her while they team up to solve the puzzles. What is not to love about these stories?
  
• 
  Emily

  Man. I reaaaaly had to slog through this one. I mean, REALLY. I think the last 25 pages or so I just barely skimmed, just enough to get the point so that I wouldn't feel like I'd totally wasted my time. This was definitely my least favorite of the Russell/Holmes series so far. Clearly sort of an excuse for King to get all her religious knowledge across and cram everything about the Middle East into as many pages as possible. It ended up being sort of painful to get through.
  
  I would actually recommend skipping this one completely if you're interested in the series. Just look up a quick summary of it on the internet somewhere and save yourself the pain of being mostly disinterested. Unless you're super into a ton of information about what it's like to live in the desert for half a year and not being able to bathe properly for weeks. In which case, rock on my friend.
• 
  Kam

  Getting through a series of novels with more than three or four books can be, in many ways, rather tedious. It is entirely easy to simply lose interest in the whole thing if the individual novels are unable to sustain interest, or the reader simply lacks the stamina to see the whole thing through from beginning to end.
  
  Although I do have a personal reading policy about finishing any series I start if I like the first book, I will admit that there are difficulties in seeing this through, especially if the succeeding books turn out to be terrible. This was the case with the Mary Russell series. I enjoyed the first book, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, enough that I went straight into the next book, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, only to be severely disappointed. Despite my misgivings I recalled my personal reading policy and after a few days' break to wash the bad taste of the second novel out of my mind's metaphorical mouth, I picked up A Letter of Mary, and found it a bit more pleasant to read that the last. With my confidence in the series returning, I picked up The Moor, the fourth book in the series, and had most of my goodwill towards the series restored to somewhat-similar levels as they had been after reading the first. It was in these relatively good high spirits that I plunged myself into the fifth book, O Jerusalem.
  
  This novel, unlike the last few, is a story told out of chronology with the rest, detailing Holmes and Russell's adventure in Palestine, mentioned in The Beekeeper's Apprentice. The first book mentions in passing some "job" that Mycroft has asked Holmes and Russell to do while they are in the area, though Russell does not go into detail in the first book. In this one, the reader receives the whole story - and what a story it is.
  
  Of all the Holmes stories, I've always largely favored the more "active" ones, a result of having fallen deeply in love with The Sign of Four. Anytime Holmes gets involved in a case that results in him and his companions either running criminals to ground in thrilling chase scenes, or having their lives put in very grave danger (cruel as that may sound), said story will always receive more attention from me. If those activities necessitate crawling around underground, defusing bombs, or traveling through exotic locales (and I include certain parts of London in this description), then I will most definitely be there for the ride.
  
  O Jerusalem combines all four, and includes a most colorful cast of characters to boot. This story goes back several years in terms of the actual series chronology, to when Russell was only nineteen years old and merely intellectual partner and apprentice to the great detective Sherlock Holmes, not quite Mrs. Holmes. On the run from dangerous bomb threats in London, Russell and Holmes have made their way to Palestine, where they find themselves in the care of two Bedouins, Ali and Mahmoud Hazr, who are also agents in the service of the Crown. As they slowly make their way towards Jerusalem, the Hazrs, Holmes and Russell find themselves caught up in an attempt to uncover a deadly plot involving the stirring up of resentment between Christian, Muslim, and Jew; lots and lots of dynamite; and the ancient city of Jerusalem itself.
  
  The "exotic locales" part of the formula is easily covered: the Holy Land is a mysterious and deadly place: the heart of three major world religions and one of the most disputed patches of land in history. Palestine (as it's called in the story) is also of particularly special significance to Russell, who, being Jewish, views the trip as something of a pilgrimage, and her musings regarding the significance of the areas and locales through which they travel is particularly fascinating - well, at least for me, it is, and likely will be for any history buffs.
  
  Also, what she says about the Holy Land - in particular, the political-social situation - will read very familiar to anyone who has paid attention to what is happening in the Middle East today. The reader will be quick to note, through Russell's observations and musings, that though the novel is set in the early years of the twentieth century, nothing much has really changed, not since the city of Jerusalem was first built, not since the Crusades, and not since today. This state of constancy in terms of political-social relationships, though set in the previous century, will echo familiarly with the reader and will provide a certain, perhaps slightly uncomfortable, sense of immediacy. The Holy Land has existed for thousands of years, but how much, really, has changed? It is a question Russell asks herself due to its relevance at the time, and it still bears relevance today.
  
  Along with the above came a wonderful cast of characters to get attached to. The Hazrs, in particular, will interest the reader - or annoy, depending on one's take on them. In some ways they do seem caricatures of Arabic stereotypes from the period: Ali as the headstrong, war-mongering type of Arab, and Mahmoud as the strong, silent-and-wise desert-prince type. Although the caricaturing might be a result of the fact that Ali and Mahmoud are not really Bedouin, nor really even Middle-Eastern at all to begin with, I do wish their characters had been expanded a bit more. Ali, in particular, could use a bit more character development, since his actions are always so seemingly contrary and difficult to understand at times. While I could simply shrug and point a finger at the first-person narrative point-of-view employed by the novels, which significantly narrows the amount of information - and thus character development - that can be given to other outlying characters, I feel that something could have been done to showcase the Hazr's pasts a bit more, and thus expand on their characters as well.
  
  And then there are the minor characters: the men, women, and children (and, yes, mules) they encounter along the way. I have grown particularly attached to the abbot of an isolated monastery whom Holmes and Russell pay a visit to while inquiring into the murder of a friend and colleague of the Hazrs. I liked what I saw of him, and the impression he left on me was far more striking than some of the other characters previously and later encountered. If the novels do return to this area, I hope that I get to read more about him, and hopefully he will take on a much larger role in the story than what he filled in this one - though hopefully, not as the victim.
  
  But it is the plot, and the resulting adventure that Holmes and Russell have in the Holy Land as a result of it, that really drew me in. Here is political intrigue on a grand scale; here is a mastermind with a deadly and powerful motive, and a decent level of intelligence to back it up; and here is an ancient city, a veritable tinderbox of political, religious, and social tensions, all waiting for a spark to set it all ablaze and let war begin anew. I found the storyline in this one significantly better than the last few books, and indeed it edges up slightly ahead in my eyes over the first. If this had come in second, after The Beekeeper's Apprentice, I would not have been so reluctant to pick up the succeeding books, though I think the rest would have been rather anticlimactic after this.
  
  This novel succeeds in completely restoring my good faith in the series, and makes me look forward to more. Some might think the plot a little too "Indiana Jones" for their tastes, but those who love reading about Holmes (and hopefully, at this stage, Russell too) being put through hellfire, danger, and torture (metaphorically and literally speaking), but to come out of it triumphant heroes, then this novel will certainly be a resounding success.
• 
  Cherie

  Read this story second, after the author’s introductory novel. Especially if you liked The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Don’t go to “book #2”. This is as good, if not better than the first, at times. King can write. King can tell a great story, and the setting is fantastically detailed. The historical information will jump out at you.
  
  I hope you will be as transfixed as I was. I could not put it down.
  
  This is the expanded version of the time Russell and Holmes were in Palestine, hiding out from the people trying to kill them back in England.
• 
  Debbie

  This was a bit difficult to get into initially, because the setting - both time and place - are pretty foreign to me. I'm very ill-educated on the struggles that have been going on in the Middle East in general and Jerusalem specifically for thousands of years, and I'm aware of it.
  
  However, King did her best to help me out with information about the language and a map of Jerusalem at the front. Russell helped me out in her narrative, being specific about the rules she was and was not following and why, so it made a lot more sense going forward.
  
  That being said, this part of the series was not as satisfying a read. I felt like there was a lot of drawn-out narrative, although the reason for it was clear, but it slowed things down considerably. Russell's difficulty in focusing on the mystery, rather than all the historical bits around her (true to character as it may be), made it difficult for me to focus on the mystery as well. Finally, I didn't think the climax or the end were very... gratifying considering all that built up to it. Overall, this installation in the time line is useful to understanding the Russell/Holmes dynamic and filling in gaps, but not one I'd recommend reading.
• 
  Ron

  Excellent. Once again Laurie King creates the sense of "being there". In this case, "there" is Palestine in 1919. Not only does she seem to get the history right, but also the geography, the sociology and the feel and smell of the Middle east.
  
  Another good tale, well told.
• 
  Tawallah

  Writing an espionage book is quite a difficult feat. I’ve been spoiled by John le Carre, Robert Ludlum to name a few. This entry is based on events briefly mentioned in The Beekeeper‘s Apprentice. It doesn’t add anything to that book and is likely a stage for the next entry. Unfortunately it feels like the weakest book so far. There was something missing here - not just the interaction between Mary and Sherlock but a sense of direction in the story. It feels aimless and thin. The only thread seems to be talking about Jerusalem at one of many key moments in history. And whilst my knowledge is lacking of these events, it failed to completely hold my interest.
  
  Rating 2.5
• 
  Magdalena aka A Bookaholic Swede

  O Jerusalem takes us back in time to the first book when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes had to flee England because of the danger they were in. The country they chose, or rather Mary chose, was Palestine.
  
  This is the first book in the series that I didn’t quite like as much as the previous four books. That doesn’t mean that the book isn’t good. Just that it took some rereads to make me really appreciate the book. Now it’s a good book for me, and I wouldn’t mind re-read, but I was a bit disappointed when I read it the first time. Could be because I preferred the stories to move forward not reading about past events. It was quite a lot of years since I read it the first time so it’s hard to know exactly why. The case was probably just not as engrossing as the previous books cases.
  
• 
  WK

  In the middle of "The Beekeeper’s Apprentice" Russell and Holmes leave England for a bit to get a breather from the relentless pursuit of there cunning opponent and agree to do a favor for Mycroft during their travels. This launches them into the world of international intrigue and the hands of the Hazr ‘brothers’. Two hard edged, unaccommodating ‘allies’?
  Then there’s the walk with Russell and Holms on the path of the Good Samaritan, amazing!
  
• 
  Rachel (Kalanadi)

  Mary puts up with a lot of men and Holmes is kind of an ass to her through most of the book. This dampened my enjoyment a lot... probably just my mood. But also the plot of this book was too thin. It needed a more focused plot and less minute description of every possible action and detail.
  
  I do really like Mary, though and the style in which her narrative is told in all the books I've read so far. That was the saving grace of O Jerusalem. But ultimately I was miffed by the characters and the plot.
• 
  Margot Rizzi

  Ok I loved this series last summer but I took a break from it and with this book I was struggling to get back into it as much as I was then. I still like the characters but a lot of it went over my head which I think added to me not being engaged. I was just really bored to be honest. Still love Holmes though. This is just a little bump in the road don’t worry about it.
• 
  Thomas Ray

  Good stories.
  
  Read them in this order:
  
  1. The Beekeeper's Apprentice (1994. Events 1915.04.08–1919.07). Sherlock Holmes (b. early 1861), having retired to the downs, meets young Mary Russell (b. 1900.01.02), who becomes his apprentice. (Purported to have been written by Mary Russell in the late 1980s.) (Holmes on 1915.04.08 says he's 54, and on 1920.12.26 that he's 59.)
  
  5. O Jerusalem (1999. Events 1918.12.30–1919.02) Fifth-written and fifth-published of the Mary Russel/Sherlock Holmes novels, it fleshes out an interlude within the first book. It's also a prequel for book six. If you're reading the Kindle edition of /O Jerusalem/, start at the cover. Not at the table of contents. Not at the beginning, which is chapter 1. Before the table of contents are: Map of Jerusalem and of Palestine; Arabic Words and Phrases; A Note about Chapter Headings; "Editor's Remarks," "Author's Prologue:" 2% of the book is before the table of contents.
  
  2. A Monstrous Regiment of Women (1995. Events 1920.12.26–1921.06)
  
  2.5 The Marriage of Mary Russell
  
  3 background, very optional. Almost any Dorothy L. Sayers mystery.
  
  3. A Letter of Mary [Magdalene] (1996. Events of 1923.08.14–1923.09.08)
  
  4 background, optional. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
  
  4. The Moor (1998. Events of 1923.10) Includes spoilers for The Hound of the Baskervilles.
  
  NOT about a North AfricanMuslim—the moor is Dartmoor in southwest England, setting of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and almost a character in the book: "a high, wide bowl of granite, some 350 square miles covered with a thin, peaty soil and scattered with outcrops of stone. ... The floor of the moor is a thousand feet above the surrounding Devonshire countryside, from which it rises abruptly." [p. 23 of 307, chapter 2.] Parts of Dartmoor get up to 80 inches (2 meters) of rain per year.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmoor Here's a photo of Aune Mire:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmoo...
  A map of Dartmoor is at the front of the print book, but at the back of the Kindle version, just before the "praise for other Mary Russell mysteries." Here's google maps:
  https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dar...
  Effects of acidic bog water: Holmes says few skeletons have been found in the bogs, and speculates that the acid dissolves them [21%, Chapter 5]. Could be. However: Acidic bog water destroys plants but preserves animal skin and leather, hair and wool, horn and fingernails. Alkaline lake mud destroys animal remains, but preserves plant material such as wood and flaxen thread. —Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, pp. 86, 90.
  Trivia questions for The Moor:
  https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work...
  
  
  The author's website:
  
  https://laurierking.com/author-pages/...
  (née Richardson).
  
• 
  Irena Pasvinter

  "O Jerusalem" describes the glorious adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Marry Russel in... Palestine, in 1919. And of course, as usual, Holmes and Russel save the day -- not much of a spoiler.
  
  I would prefer to give this book 5 stars or 4 or at least 3. And I might have done it if:
  
  1) I knew nothing about the Dome of the Rock
  2)I had never tried to learn a foreign language, and especially learn Arabic after learning Hebrew
  
  Unfortunately, as these two conditions were not met, I couldn't suspend my disbelieve enough to enjoy the story.
  
  I couldn't seriously consider Turks planning to explode the Dome of the Rock, which happens to be the third holiest place in Sunni Islam, even they plotted to do it for the sake of blaming this atrocious deed on Jews.
  
  Also, I failed to swallow that Holmes, after supposedly traveling to Mecca in disguise some 30 years ago, could now not only pass for an authentic Bedouin, but also for a rather talkative Bedouin with fluent and flowery native Arabic speech, telling long tales to unsuspecting native Arabic speakers around the fire and such. And yes, Arabic has many accents and dialects, but none of them sounds like the British one. Of course, Holmes could have spent these last 30 years regularly polishing his brilliant Arabic, but somehow I couldn't believe in this either.
  
  Marry Russel, who is known for her "ear for languages", displayed even more impressive linguistic talents. Just 10 days on a ship with a textbook of Arabic and Holmes's tutoring, then a couple of weeks of language immersion in Palestine plus more tutoring from Holmes, and lo and behold -- she too is almost fluent, her comprehension is excellent, and although she occasionally resides to feigning dumbness and speech defects, she is not particularly consistent in this maneuver. Anyway, nobody ever suspects her not being a native speaker. Well done, Mary.
  
  This is why I gave this book 2 stars which by goodreads rating actually means "it was ok". It definitely could have been much worse if another author attempted to set a detective story in this time and place.
• 
  Kathleen

  "He was as dirty and ill-clothed as any London street-arab..." There's the quote that lost this book its stars. I was mostly enjoying the story, though cringing at the constant implications that living like the Bedouin necessitates one being filthy and smelly. But the use of the pejorative "street-arab" broke the camel's back.
  
  Granted, it was said by a character of the early 20th century - our heroine, Mary Russell, in fact - but the author's introduction failed to apologize for such an appalling bit of historicity.
  
  Huck Finn uses the n word, and it's too late for Mark Twain to offer an author's note apologizing for the offense this historic accuracy brings. But it's not too late for Laurie R. King to note that "stree-arab" was a term in use at the time, a specifically racist but also classist term meant to characterize a filthy, impoverished, and perhaps homeless person as being as dirty as an Arab, but that its use today is appalling. Even such an apology would leave the disgust at the lifestyle of the Bedouin permeating the novel. No amount of dye on the skins of Holmes and Russell can cover this over.
• 
  Lisa

  This is the fifth book. In the Sherlock Holmes-Mary Russel series, although it takes place in an earlier time period than the last one--1918.
  Sherlock and Mary are forced to flee England and choose British-occupied Palestine as their escape. Their trip coincides with a series of unsolved murders which exacerbates tensions between the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian populations in the city. Unlike the previous four books in this series, there was very little detective work or character development in this novel. I had a difficult time even getting through the book as it seemed like one long trip through an underground tunnel. No witty dialogue or clever detective work, just pure drudgery. I would recommend skipping this installment and moving on to Justice Hall. I wish I had.
• 
  Mike Finn

  
  

  'O Jerusalem' was a book that I came to with reluctance rather than enthusiasm. I'd enjoyed the first four books in the series both because each book had a strong plot heightened by fascinating historical details and because Laurie King slowly grew the partnership between Russell and Holmes into something credible and intriguing. The retired, much older Holmes is an extension of Conan Doyle's creation, not a pastiche of it and Mary Russell, intelligent, brave, unconventional, intellectually rigorous and endlessly curious is a character strong enough not to be at Holmes' side without being in his shadow.

  
  
  
  
  

  Yet, when I reached 'O Jerusalem', the fifth book, my enthusiasm for the series faltered. I was put off because the book goes back in time to fill in a blank few weeks in the first book,
  ‘The Beekeeper’s Apprentice’ when Russell and Holmes his away from their enemies by spending time abroad. This bothered me because I thought it was likely to lose the forward momentum in the relationship between Russel and Holmes that the first four books had delivered, and because it took me back to a point when the age gap and experience gap between Russell and Holmes had seemed too wide to be bridged. I was also put off by the setting of the book. I seldom enjoy books set in rancid politics of the Middle East and the behaviour of the British Government in 1919 seems to me to have been a major contributor to the instability of the region for the rest of the century.

  
  
  
  
  

  In the end, I read 'O Jerusalem' simply so that I could move on and read the rest of the series. While the book didn't engage me in the way its predecessors had, it turned out not to be a dull chore either.

  
  
  
  
  

  It had been so long since I'd read a Russell and Holmes book that I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed Mary Russell's low-key, slightly dry, very perceptive descriptions of people, places and events. Listening to Mary telling the story of her time with Holmes in Jerusalem was the strongest part of the book for me.

  
  
  
  
  

  The plot is about espionage rather than solving a murder. I found it to be a little static, although the ending managed to have enough energy in it to read like a thriller. The sense of place was very strong. It didn't make me hungry to visit Palestine but it did bring both the discomforts of the environment and the richness of the culture to life.

  
  
  
  
  

  I found myself out of sympathy with her romantic view of Jerusalem and her uncritical admiration of Edmund Allenby but I could see that they fitted into her character perfectly both as a religious scholar and as a nineteen-year-old coming face to face with one of the most charismatic men in the region.

  
  
  
  
  

  I was surprised to find that the book helped me to become more comfortable with the relationship between Russell and Holmes. Throughout most of the book, Russell presents herself as a young Arab boy, called Amir. This seemed to be a very empowering experience for her, allowing her to display her odd mix of scholarship, language skills, and combat skills to advantage. I also liked the scene in the book where Russell attends a ball at Allenby's request and finds herself as the only single woman in a room full of young Army Officiers who buzz around her like flies. She rises to the occasion with aplomb and enjoys seeing Holmes' discomfort at the attention she receives.

  
  
  
  
  

  So, having been reminded of how much I like Mary Russell, I'm now ready to resume reading the series and I'm looking forward to moving back up the timeline for the next book, 'Justice Hall' and seeing how a slightly older and no longer single Mary Russell handles a meeting with two men that she worked with closely in Palestine.

  
  
• 
  K.A. Wiggins

  Fun, fresh entry transplanting the typically British Holmes stories to the Middle East. A pleasant shift from the previous entry, The Moor, which felt quite a bit slower-paced, or perhaps simply of a different, less appealing form of exoticism. Great cast, with some rather James Bond dashing about and intrigue.
• 
  Nabanita

  Found this book quite by mistake. I was looking for the audiobook of O Jerusalam which is a non-fiction but ended up finding a Sherlock Holmes tale which actually was fun to listen to.
• 
  Meg Ulmes

  Each of these novels is so much fun to read because of the mystery and the history and culture that I learn with each story. On to the next!
• 
  Steven jb

  The writing was adequate but the story was fair at best. One of the main characters is supposed to be Sherlock Holmes. In the first of this series, there is an explanation why the Sherlock Holmes in this series differs from Conan Doyle's Holmes. This is unacceptable. If you change the character of Sherlock Holmes as written by the original author, then you are using the name of a character for commercial purposes only since this is not the character the original author intended or the audience expects. In this particular book, the character named Sherlock Holmes bears no resemblance to Doyle's character, and displays very little of the skills of Doyle's charcter, Sherlock Holmes. The first two hundred pages of this book are tedious, meandering, and should have been condensed into forty pages or so. The next hundred pages are a little better and get back to the novel's story but are again overly drawn out. The Holmes character contributes almost nothing up to this point and Russel, the young woman, barely contributes more. The final 100 pages are a bit more interesting and rescue the book from one star, but are still not very good. The best part of the book are the last two pages--it ends adequately. I am curious about the first book in this series, the Beekeeper's Apprentice. Perhaps the series started out better, explaining how at least five novels were written and read ( a few critiques allude to this ).
  
  One other thing. At one point, early in the novel, Holmes and Russell are on a stake out. Holmes wishes Russel a happy birthday. Why would the great detective pick that time to say happy birthday? It makes no sense. The author likely intends to show us Holmes all encompassing intellect, recollecting Russell's birthday and perhaps wishes to show how he thinks well of her. Yet to distract either of them from the task at hand with such a statement, or to make unnecessary noise while in the night waiting, makes no sense. The only thing this shows about the Holmes character is that he is really Dr. Watson, or perhaps Mrs. Hudson in disguise as Holmes.
  
  Addendum: I have begun reading the Beekeeper's Apprentice. So far, this is a much better novel, and the Sherlock Holmes character retains some vestige of the persona Doyle created. The Mary Russell character is also far more interesting and well done. If the novel continues in this way, it will rate as an excellent story. Apparently, Laurie King is a very good writer who went astray with O Jerusalem.
• 
  Teri-K

  This is an excellent addition to the series! Chronologically it takes place during the end of book one. I read it after book two, and I'm glad I went back to it. This story is more a typical mystery/adventure than the previous books, being a very linear tale of their time in Palestine tracking down a possible spy. There were no long digressions about theology, women's rights, or any of the other things the previous books had. Just solid story. (I liked the digressions, but I liked this, too.)
  
  Mary and Sherlock were together through all of this so there are plenty of their interactions. And the author did a wonderful job making the setting feel real. I recently watched an IMAX movie of Jerusalem and the surrounding area, and reading this made me feel like I was watching the movie again. I love a book that can take me someplace I've never been yet make me feel I was there. The history was well integrated, too. It was fascinating reading about the area not long before the birth of Israel as a country.
  
  However, I should point out I'm not a huge fan of the original Holmes as written. I've always found him conceited, supercilious and prone to jumping to conclusions the facts don't support. I like this Holmes better. :) If you're a Holmes purist, or want mystery novels that focus only on the mystery, this won't be the series for you.
  
  BTW- I listened to the first two books on audio and enjoyed them. I read this one and loved it. I guess this series works in either form. :)
  
  And upon revisiting this by listening I find I still enjoyed it a lot. I especially appreciated how the story started out very simple and straightforward and almost without my noticing it added more and more threads until they reach Jerusalem, where all the threads came together into a complete and fascinating whole. Excellent writing!
• 
  Cat

  There is truly nothing wrong with this book, which makes my two star rating rather unfair. Laurie King has a great sense of the geography of Jerusalem and its history, and she communicates the politics of Palestine in the early twentieth century without too heavy a hand. But this book convinced me that I eventually don't like books in a series without an ongoing plot arc or strong character development. While series reading rewards my investment when the characters change and evolve, mystery series that feature the same characters without clear development (in other words, you could read a single mystery, swap them around, etc., even though the chronology obviously evolves) ultimately bore me. What I liked about The Beekeeper's Apprentice was the developing relationship and respect, sometimes the teasing banter, sometimes the serious intellectual meeting of minds, between Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell. By this point in the series, King doesn't see much need to draw out the subtleties of their relationship because she has new characters and situations to deal with. So I feel like my apathy towards this book says more about my weariness with following the thread of this type of series, not a fundamental flaw in the novel. Though I will say that in spite of King's emphasis on the villain's nefariousness, the big reveal is anticlimactic and feels contrived. The section in the tunnels/aqueducts beneath the city is the most atmospheric.
• 
  Kathy Martin

  Needing to leave England for a while and accepting a commission from Sherlock's brother Mycroft, Mary and Sherlock find themselves in Palestine and in the middle of a plot to destabilize an already troubled area in 1912 when Allenby is trying to forge some sort of peace and the Turks aren't quite ready to give up the area.
  
  Mary dons the disguise of an Arab boy named Amir and has a rapid course in Arabic as they join forces with Mahmoud and Ali who are agents for Mycroft and who aren't eager to have two new strangers coming into the area. After a period of testing which tests their stamina and determination and puts a strain on Holmes who is healing from the bomb blast which precipitated their trip to Palestine, Holmes and Mary find themselves trying to find the mastermind who is behind a few murders and a plot to blow up a sacred site in Jerusalem.
  
  The story sees Holmes and Russell traveling through many dusty parts of Palestine including cliff-side monasteries and buried tunnels and aqueducts and tombs. Mary and Sherlock even have a chance to swim in the Dead Sea. Mary is often awestruck seeing the sites she has studied and the places that form an important part of her religion.
  
  I loved the vivid descriptions of the land and people they meet on their journey. The plot was nicely twisty. I liked the growing relationship between Mary and Sherlock as they ease from Mary's apprenticeship to her being a full and equal partner to Holmes.
• 
  Allan

  Just scrumptuous. I read this as the last of the (so far) 8 Mary Russell novels and believe it to be the best...right ahead of "Justice Hall." That both books feature the same two subsidiary characters may be to blame.
  
  I really enjoyed the interplay between Russell, Holmes, Ali and Mahmoud as they slip around post-WWI Palestine. The latter two remind me of John Buchan's Sandy Arbuthnot in many ways and all feature similarities to the very real T. E. Lawrence.
  
  The book actually has a snap of an ending, something not always present in King's work - though that's no condemnation, just observation. The journey is always the prize in these novels, not the destination. In the same way Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books reward the reader, Laurie King rewards us with dense texture and wonderful characterization, making a climax unnecessary to the telling of the tale.
  
  King is one of our treasures these days. Her work in these eight books (all I've read of her so far) is to be cherished and read slowly to postpone the finishing of them as long as possible.
  
  
• 
  Minh

  I wondered for a long time if I would ever come back to the Mary Russell series, they're a visual pleasure to read and the prose (if somewhat of a 1920's kickback with the ridiculousness of the run-on sentences) makes me want to roll around with contemplation and maybe go back for a second read.
  
  The series placing of this novel is a strange one, despite being labeled the 5th in the series, chronologically it actually occurs just after the first book returning us to the relationship of the budding apprentice and master. It's a nice way to bring back some of the tension between the pair which to be honest was getting a little stale with their current married status.
  
  Interesting to read but the novel concentrated a lot on the surrounds of Jerusalem than the mystery on hand, lovely to read but I struggled with the pacing.
• 
  Ladyhawk

  Fantastic! Laurie R King continues to amaze me with her superb research of the current Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Story. If you enjoy historical fiction, the reader will undoubtedly find Mary's historical knowledge of the land of Jerusalem a delightful treat.
  
  I love how each story has so far taken the reader to very different parts of the world with Mary and Sherlock bringing their expert investigational skills to the scene where even they are often tested to the brink. The subtle and wry humor and genuine respect and care for each other displayed by both characters provides a modicum of humanity that brings these characters to life and commands a fierce devotion from the reader.
• 
  Emilio

  
  
  Another great addition to the series. I really enjoyed it! Russel an homes are SO perfect. King has captured Holmes quite well and has added a facet with Mary that is such a pleasure.
  
  No spoilers here .... But the ending is terrific!
  
  I will definitely continue the series.
• 
  Morris Nelms

  Great fun. I also learned a lot about Israel and WWI. King does a fine job of recreating Holmes, and Russell is a great foil for Sherlock.