Justice Hall
by Laurie King
Bantam Books/$23.95
Crank up the A/C, put on a pot of tea and crack open the latest Laurie King mystery. Suddenly you're transported to early 20th century England. An anglophile who lives in California, King pays homage to the classic British mystery genre with her Mary Russell series.
King's heroine is the young bride and apprentice of an aging Sherlock Holmes. It sounds like a preposterous proposition, but King manages to pull it off with a good bit of research and some seamless prose. Her plotting, however, shows its stitches, beginning with the build-up to the climax, and continuing through the somewhat contrived resolution. Nonetheless, it's a guilty pleasure and delicious read for a rainy day, filled as it is with clever Holmesian observations and deductions, wry humor and lovingly wrought portraits of 1920s British life, from seedy pubs to grand manor houses.
In an attempt to give gravity to a lightweight genre, King infuses her historical novel with contemporary liberal values. She does so fairly gracefully, with a heroine who embodies feminist strength and independence, a very prominent lesbian character, and a couple of misfit noblemen who prefer a nomadic life in the desert to the luxury and titles to which they were born.
King also inserts a fairly strong indictment of the idiocies of war. The plot revolves around the dubious execution of a young officer ostensibly for cowardice during a World War I battle. King portrays the ugliness of his treatment through his letters and the heartbroken reaction of his parents when they finally learn the truth behind his death.
The poignancy is rendered more powerful and real by an editor's note at the end of the novel. It states that in June of 2001, the Shot at Dawn memorial was unveiled in England, depicting a blindfolded teenage soldier and commemorating the 306 men who were executed for desertion and cowardice in World War I. The death penalty for such crimes was abolished in 1930. In 1997, a review of the cases of the 306 men was begun, but the government has refused to grant posthumous pardons.
None of the politics interferes with what is still essentially a good escapist read, and apolitical or conservative mystery fanatics should not be overly bothered by the intrusion of real-life concerns.
—Susan Edwards
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2002.