A Letter of Mary

I felt kind of let down by this book. I'm not much of a Russell/Holmes ‘shipper and though it was obvious from the first novel that King was pushing them toward a romantic union, I felt it was unnecessary and a bit far-fetched. In this book, even after two years of marriage, their relationship seems virtually unchanged and it would have been nice to see a little development there.

Mostly I was disappointed by the mystery. Mary was off on a wild-goose chase for a good third of the novel for no other reason than, I suppose, to give her something to do and for an excuse for a few feminist rants. However correct they were, I didn't feel like they added anything of interest to the story. Then the mystery seemed to mostly solve itself. The “villain” was ridiculous and the motive was ridiculous. It was almost as if the author started out trying to make a mystery based on this mysterious letter and then decided that it was too much effort and settled for something very ho-hum.

I really enjoyed the first Mary Russell novel, and liked the second quite a bit – though somewhat less than the first. I'll give the fourth a go, but I really hope it doesn't continue this downward trend.