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Content snapshot
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Violence
Some
Some violence; the spy game context involves danger and deception
Language
Barely any
Mild language
Sexual Content
Barely any
Mild content
Substance Use
Barely any
Mild content
Emotional Intensity
Some
The specific romance of the Great Game as literature versus the reality of imperialism it served; Mary Russell's discomfort in a tradition that excluded women and the ingenuity with which she navigates it anyway
What this book is about
In 1923, Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell travel to India in pursuit of a missing British intelligence officer — a case that takes them into the territory of the Great Game, the spy conflict between Britain and Russia that Kipling chronicled. The investigation parallels the world of Kipling's 'Kim,' and the novel is in explicit conversation with that book. Laurie R. King's seventh Russell/Holmes novel is the most specifically intertextual — the pleasure of the book is partly in how it inhabits the Kipling tradition while giving Mary Russell's perspective a feminist edge that Kipling's original couldn't have.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
seventh Mary Russell / Sherlock Holmes novel by Laurie R. King; set in India
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