Knave of Diamonds
by Laurie R King
7 December 2025
With the last book in this series I found it unexpectedly at the library before it was supposed to be available. This time I hadn’t been paying attention and the first I knew that there was a new book in this series was spotting it on the new books shelf in the library. So I guess that’s my strategy from now on…
This time we have Russell returning home to Sussex and thankfully the story grabbed me pretty quickly. Sherlock rushes off to see Mycroft and a long lost uncle turns up to see Mary. A theft of “the Irish Crown Jewels” links both partners encounters though they don’t know about the link at the time.
Oh, and it was two books ago in Castle Shade where I got wound up with the editing search-and-replace that left the book with “fields of maise”. This book has fallen prey to the same error with US to UK conversion, one character has “seised” another’s wrist before we’re a handful of pages in, and there’s more after that. Just annoying.
On the whole though it was an entertaining tale. It flips between Russell’s first person narrative, her uncle Jake’s voice is also used in the first person, and Holmes has sections that are told in the third person. I find this constant character switching a bit wearing. It’s not that the sections away from Mary aren’t interesting, but that they don’t really advance the plot. And I’m glad they don’t because I’d always rather have more of Mary Russell and I’d prefer it if the books stuck more closely to her viewpoint. The other characters are interesting but it starts to feel a lot like filler.
Nineteen books into a series though; that’s pretty impressive both for writer and reader. As much as I like Mary I think I’d rather King wrote something else for a change. But no doubt I’ll be back to read more of this series.
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