At the close of the year 1918, forced to flee England, Sherlock Holmes and his nineteen-year-old apprentice Mary Russell enter British-occupied Palestine under the auspices of Holmes's enigmatic brother, Mycroft. Their arrival coincides with a rash of unsolved murders that has baffled the authorities and seems unrelated to the growing tensions in the area among Jew, Moslem, and Christian. Still, no one is too pleased at Holmes's insistence on reconstructing the most recent homicide in the desert gully where it occurred.

What they unexpectedly uncover will lead Russell and Holmes through an exotic gauntlet of labyrinthine bazaars, verminous hovels, cliff-hung monasteries?and into mortal danger. In the jewel-like city of Jerusalem, they will at last meet their adversary, whose lust for power could reduce the city's most ancient and sacred place to rubble and ignite a tinderbox of hostilities just waiting for a spark.?




Although O Jerusalem is Laurie King's fifth book in her Holmes-Russell series, it actually takes us back to the era of her first book, The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Perhaps King was afraid that her characters, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, were becoming too cozy as an old married couple, and she wanted to recreate the edgy sexual tension of their first encounter.

It's 1918. Nineteen-year-old Mary and her fiftysomething mentor are forced to flee England to escape a deadly adversary. Sherlock's well-connected brother Mycroft sends them to Palestine to do some international sleuthing. Here, a series of murders threatens the fragile peace.

Laurie King connects us, through details of language, custom, history, and sensual impressions, to this very alien environment. Russell, Holmes, and two marvelously imagined Arab guides named Mahmoud and Ali trek through the desert and visit ancient monasteries clinging like anthills to cliffs. They also find time to take tea with the British military legend Allenby in Haifa and skulk through or under the streets of Jerusalem. King puts us into each scene so quickly and completely that her narrative flow never falters.

Stepping back in time also gives King a chance to show us Holmes through the eyes of a Russell not yet as full of love as a honeymooner, nor as complacent as a comfortable wife. "There it was--sardonic, superior, infuriating," Mary says about Holmes's voice at one point.

Wisdom is knowing when, and how much, to shake things up--even in a successful series. Laurie King is a wise woman indeed. --Dick Adler

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