Mary Russell (character)

For other people named Mary Russell (character), see Mary Russell (character) (disambiguation).

Mary Judith Russell
First appearance	The Beekeeper's Apprentice
Last appearance	Locked Rooms
Created by	Laurie R. King
In-universe information
Gender	Female
Occupation	detective, theologian
Spouse	Sherlock Holmes
Relatives	parents and younger brother, deceased; one aunt
Nationality	English

Mary Russell is a fictional character in a book series by Laurie R. King. Most of the novels are told in first-person retrospective from Mary Russell's point of view. Locked Rooms is the exception, with approximately a third of the book in the third person. So far the novels have been set in the Teens and Twenties of the early 20th century. King's introductions to each novel form part of an ongoing frame story about a mystery writer who is anonymously sent Mary Russell's memoirs in manuscript form and attempts to determine who sent them and why.

The daughter of a British Jewish mother and an American millionaire father, the fifteen-year-old Russell returns to Sussex, after the death of her parents and brother in a car accident on the eve of World War I. There she becomes the partner, and later wife, to Sherlock Holmes. Mary Russell is an Oxford scholar of theology and chemistry. She is tall and slim, with strawberry-blonde hair, and blue eyes. She usually wears glasses, due to poor eyesight. She considers herself Jewish like her mother, though her father was a member of the Episcopal Church.

Books in the series

1. The Beekeeper's Apprentice opens in 1915 as a young Mary Russell literally stumbles across the retired detective Sherlock Holmes on Sussex Downs. Russell impresses Holmes with her powers of deduction, and he begins to informally train her as a detective. This training becomes vitally important when Russell is caught up in an old enemy's vendetta against Holmes.
2. A Monstrous Regiment of Women takes place in the years just after World War I. Russell becomes involved in a Christian feminist movement concerned with philanthropy and political activism. When the wealthier followers of the group start to die under mysterious circumstances after willing their fortunes to the cause, Russell and Holmes are drawn into a deeper mystery. A sub-plot deals with the deepening relationship between Russell and Holmes. The title is a reference to the 16th century pamphlet The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
3. A Letter of Mary closely follows the events of Monstrous Regiment. A first-century manuscript surfaces that would turn Christianity on its ear, and its discoverer, a friend of Russell and Holmes, turns up dead. While they investigate the death, they must also evade those who are looking for the manuscript.
4. The Moor takes the partnership out to Dartmoor, the location of original The Hound of the Baskervilles. Another hound is stalking the night, and they must discover how and why. Russell meets Holmes' old acquaintance, the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, the squire of Lew Trenchard, when he asks their help in ridding the Moor of the ghostly hound.
5. O Jerusalem revisits a visit to Palestine which was glossed over in The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Working with two of Mycroft's agents, Mahmoud and Ali Hazr, the partners seek out spies in post-WWI Palestine.
6. In Justice Hall, Mahmoud and Ali Hazr reappear in England, as two English noblemen. They are brought back to the life they left behind by Mahmoud's sudden inheritance of a dukedom. Russell and Holmes help search for Mahmoud's nephew, so he can pass on the coronet and return to Palestine. While there, the pair dig into the past to discover the truth behind Mahmoud's other nephew's mysterious wartime death.
7. The Game In the early days of 1924, Russell and Holmes are given an urgent task by his brother Mycroft: Find a British spy gone missing along India's northwest frontier, where men are dying and trouble is brewing. The spy is one whom Holmes knows from his travels in India long ago, under the name Siegurson: Kimball O'Hara, known to the world by the name Rudyard Kipling called him, Kim.
8. Locked Rooms Setting sail from their adventures in India during the spring of 1924, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn their faces toward San Francisco. The time has come to close up the house and business interests she inherited on the death of her family, ten years before. But disturbing dreams and painful memories make the visit more difficult than she expected, and Holmes suspects that there are dark secrets in his wife's past that even she is not aware of. A young Dashiell Hammett makes a cameo appearance.

External links

• Laurie R. King's homepage
• "Letters of Mary", Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes fan fiction
• Mary Russell's Blog and MySpace profile
• The Mary Russell Mystery Crossword, appearing in the July 4, 2005 New Yorker.