My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Long retired, Sherlock Holmes quietly pursues his study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. He never imagines he would encounter anyone whose intellect matched his own, much less an audacious teenage girl with a penchant for detection. Miss Mary Russell becomes Holmes' pupil and quickly hones her talent for deduction, disguises and danger. But when an elusive villain enters the picture, their partnership is put to a real test.
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I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him.
That’s is opening lines of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice and a book that I have read several times since the first time I read it when I was around 14-15 years old. The strange and wonderful thing is that it’s a book that never ceases to be anything other than enjoyable, despite the countless times I’ve read it.
Mary Russell is a young girl when she stumbles over Sherlock Holmes in a field as he is painting bees with red and blue dots. Seems like an odd thing to do, but she quickly figures out why and tells him and then she really surprise him when she reveals that she is actually a girl under the boyish clothes she is wearing. And, that is the start of a friendship that will lead to her being accepted as his apprentice.
It’s a wonderful book. It’s one of those I return to when I feel the need to visit old friends. The story never gets boring; it feels rather like I’m still discovering new things about the book every time I read the book.
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