Interview with Laurie R. King

Although Laurie R. King has written several crime fiction novels (her first book, A GRAVE TALENT, brought her the honorable Edgar Award for Best First Novel) she is to Sherlockians first of all known as the author of the mystery series featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. The series include (in order of publication) THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE, OR ON THE SEGREGATION OF THE QUEEN (1994), A MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN (1995), A LETTER OF MARY (1996), THE MOOR (1998) and most recently O JERUSALEM (1999).

The two first have been translated to Danish: BIAVLERENS LÆRLING and ET MONSTRØST KVINDEREGIMENTE, both published by Klim.

To Sherlockian readers the Russel/Holmes stories are pastiches and they are read for many reasons as supplement to Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. Sherlockian readers will probably also be the most difficult group of people to satisfy. King's books have become some of the most popular and at the same time controversial pastiches in recent history. She has achieved a substantial following, but she is also confronted with furious resistance from Sherlockian purists.

Just before the publication of O JERUSALEM, I asked Laurie King for this interview, and she kindly took her time to answer a bunch of questions. The undersigned has fully enjoyed the books and if this fact shows through during the interview it is not intended but probably inevitable. The interview only focuses on the Russell/Holmes series as it is intended for Sherlockian readers primarily.

MS: When did you start writing, and why were you drawn to write detective fiction?

LRK: I began writing fiction when I was 35 and my younger child had just begun preschool--three entire mornings a week. I don't know that it was the idea of detective fiction that attracted me so much as writing novels with strong bones, which are what mysteries have. In fact, I didn't realize I was a "mystery writer" until A GRAVE TALENT was published [in 1993]. Publishers need to categorize things for the convenience of the booksellers, but I've always just thought of myself as a novelist.

MS: You have a master's degree in theology. How do you feel that your university training relates to your authorship today?

LRK: One thing about higher education, and particularly graduate school, is that you get used to producing words, and they need to be put together in a way that gets the idea across. My own academic background of theology encouraged me to treat words as vital and heavily loaded things--whole books have been written about the meaning of a word used in the Bible.

MS: Do you have a specific target group you'd like to reach with your books?

LRK: Something that has interested me from the beginning is how broad the spectrum of my readers is, especially for the Russell books. One day I had two fan letters in the mail, one from a 12 years old girl, the other from an 82 years old man in a rest home. So no, I would hate to restrict myself to a specific target group--aside from that composed of people who love books, perhaps.

MS: How often do you attend conferences/fairs abroad? (Is there any possibility of seeing you in Denmark in the near future?)

LRK: Very seldom. I've been to BoucherCon both times it's been in England, and several years ago the Scandinavian Crime Writers association flew me to Norway for their conference, after which I visited Stockholm and Copenhagen for my publishers there. I would love to go back, but have no plans in the immediate future.

MS: What sort of research do you do for the books (history, science, language, geography, etc.)?

LRK: It depends on the book. If there is a specific area--police procedure, the history of Palestine in early 1918--I will concentrate on that, using books and newspapers and personal interviews. For the Russell books, I tend to use an unstructured approach to research, wandering into areas in the library with no particular goal in mind, and picking up books in bookstores and catalogues that have some interest and are in my period--memoirs are particularly valuable, though one never knows until one pick it up what gems might be found. If any. And when I'm in a foreign land for the book I will use a copy of the Baedeker's guide from a year as close as possible to my setting (though there are gaps during the war years, of course.)

MS: How do you construct a story? Do you write a detailed plot outline first, or just let the story "tell itself" as you write?

LRK: I don't outline, just have a direction in the back of my mind as I begin, and a strong sense of where the book is going, and more or less how it is going to end. I wish I could do outlines, but whenever I try, the finished product bears absolutely no resemblance to my original notes.

MS: The way you write, you tell at least one other story parallel to the crime story. It is far from the typical "whodunit". Could you comment on that?

LRK: It may be far from the typical whodunit, but I don't think a lot of people these days are writing typical whodunits. Most of us try to enrich the story line with details about the lives of the people involved, particularly in a series, and that subplot normally is not completely separate, but is used to illuminate some aspect of the main plot investigative. It is one of the joys of the mystery genre, that one is allowed to run two or more threads at a time, without taking away from the central theme.

MS: Why did you choose to use the character Sherlock Holmes? What do you think of him as character and figure? Are you just using him as a myth or do you want to tell - how shall I put it - a Sherlockian story with more substance and new messages?

LRK: When I began the BEEKEEPER series, I wanted to create The Detective as a woman. Mary Russell is a female, young, twentieth century Sherlock Holmes, and I thought it would be more interesting actually to juxtapose her with the original, to bring them face to face and see what happened. So no, I do not think of myself as telling a new Sherlockian story. I am telling a Mary Russell story--and I was very annoyed when the cover design for O Jerusalem slipped by with the header, "featuring Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell." The inside title page gets it right--a Mary Russell story--but not the cover.

As a character, he is superb, far more subtle and multi-dimensional than people give Conan Doyle credit for. Which is of course why Holmes has become the most immediately recognizable fictional character in the world, because he is, underneath his apparent coldness, immensely alive. The reader senses that, and responds to it, and if Mary Russell is a fraction as real, I will be a happy woman.

MS: Well, I guess (sorry deduce) that Sherlockians can't help looking at the Mary Russell stories as pastiches even though the books are featuring both Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes equally in a partnership. How do you feel about the books being "classified" as a Sherlockian pastiche series? I mean, I use the word "pastiche" in the most positive sense, but you as the author might interpret it as "imitation" or "recycling"?

LRK: By now I am resigned to having the Russell books called Holmes pastiches - not that I agree, but then I never really agreed with the classification of A DARKER PLACE as suspense or A GRAVE TALENT as a mystery. To my mind, they're all just novels, even when they involve the police and have the structure of the traditional mystery (detective, clues, suspects, etc). The classification of books into niches is done for the convenience of the sales reps and the booksellers, to help place the books on the store's shelf and thus take advantage of the reader's habit of having a specific preference. In recognition of this, obviously a lot of people interested in Sherlock Holmes will also be interested in the Russell books, but I resist the flat classification of the BEEKEEPER series as pure Sherlockiana. It is more a variation on a theme, or doing riffs on the Canon, or homage to Conan Doyle. Not imitation, but development of an idea.

MS: Did any of the reviews of your books surprise you? If yes, which and why?

LRK: Not surprise me, but certainly teach me. A good reviewer, although he or she is not writing for the author, can point out things that the lowly writer had not realized: that parts of the plot the writer thought so very clever are actually terribly cliched, that plots creak if not well oiled, that the parts of the book the writer thought the most basic are actually those that give the whole thing its form and beauty. I pay attention to reviews, and bleed when they are bad. But I learn.

MS: You must enjoy writing to make such good books. However, are you sometimes tempted to kill off Holmes or Russell (or both)?

LRK: Not yet. Whenever I finish a book, I admit I am tempted to wall them up in a deep cave for a couple of years, but I can't imagine a Russell book without Holmes, and I'm not ready to have done with Russell. I can, however, understand the urge that had Conan Doyle sending the gent off the Reichenbach Falls, particularly considering how strongly Conan Doyle felt about having Greater Things to write. I, however, have no delusion that I am writing Great Things, so I cannot feel that Russell is getting in my way.
Some hundreds of King's fans gather together on the mailing list RUSS-L on the Internet. Here details of all kinds in the stories are turned over and discussed. Some fans have even - often quite cleverly - written short pastiches to King's books in an attempt to "close holes" or to finish a dead end. These re-pastiches, as we might call them, are to be found in the collection THE HIVE at the Internet.

MS: Have you read any fan-written Holmes and Russell pastiches? If so, what did you think of them? How do you feel about pastiches of your work being written by the fans?

LRK: I was actually sent a couple of pieces--a short story and part of a book--last year, both of them thinly veiled Sherlockian erotica. I had to write back to the women and tell them that please, two such private people as Holmes and Russell must surely be permitted to close the bedroom door on their adoring public. And although I will stand up for the freedom of every person to indulge his or her fantasies, that doesn't mean that I have to listen to them.
Those poor women, they'll probably never write again.
As for non-erotica, no, I haven't read any of that, probably because if it's bad I'll wince, and if it's good it will become a part of my inner landscape for Russell and I won't be able to separate it off from my own writing.

MS: Would you like to see the stories made into a film or films? If yes, what things in the books would you feel *must* be included?

LRK: I feel ambivalent about the idea of any of my books converted to film. On the one hand, it would be great fun to see them prancing about on the big (or small) screen. On the other, I am well aware of what violence film makers can do to a book, and how the writer suffers in sympathy to the characters.
As for what must be included, I couldn't even begin to decide. It would all depend on the thrust of the film. Not being a writer of screenplays myself, I have little grasps of the mechanics.

MS: You know of the RUSS-L mailing list. Do you ever read any of the digests?

LRK: I have read them in the past, but I tend to have as little to do with anything connected with computers as I possibly can. I do know how to send an attached document, but that's about as sophisticated as it gets. I write with a fountain pen and use the computer as a glorified typewriter that makes editing easy.

MS: How far ahead were you thinking when you wrote THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE? Did you plan to start a series or did it just "happen"?

LRK: Even from the beginning, when I had no real idea what I was getting into, I envisioned Russell in a series. I think you can tell that by the pacing of BEEKEEPER, where things are allowed to develop over a long period of time.

MS: You seem to have put some of your own ideas and traits into Mary Russell. What do you think is the most notable similarity between you and Mary? What would you say is the biggest difference?

LRK: As I have said in the past, the similarities between Russell and myself are more apparent than actual. On the surface, we are both feminists interested in theology, we wear glasses and have hair on top of our heads, and are married to men older than ourselves. In fact, however, we are deeply and essentially different. I'm not as bright as she is, for one thing, nor anywhere near as badly damaged by life. Had I been so damaged, had I met a mentor such as Holmes at the age of fifteen, had I not become a mother (which has been the defining role of my own life) I might more closely have resembled Mary Russell. But then, who wouldn't?

MS: A number of fans on RUSS-L have said they prefer to see Russell and Holmes working together (as in BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE or O JERUSALEM) instead of apart. Will we see more of them two acting/detecting/just being together in future books?

LRK: That depends entirely on the book. And I've also had people tell me they prefer Russell on her own, and why don't I do a book that has Holmes off on a long journey somewhere?

MS: I see. Your fans are not a homogeneous group.
As you probably know, some fans have complained about Watson in BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE is behaving like a buffoon, and not really seeming to be true to Conan Doyle's Watson. Do you have any plans to address this? Were you surprised by your reader's reaction?

LRK: I can only handle two strong characters at a time, so Watson, as does Mrs Hudson, takes a back role. I could, I suppose, have simply removed him from the scene before BEEKEEPER began, but I do like the man, and his presence adds a necessary humanity to Russell's life. I promise, sometime in the future I'll let Watson save the day.

MS: Will your future books in this series close gaps in or between earlier stories, the way that O JERUSALEM does, or do you plan to go ahead of THE MOOR? How many more books have you thought of so far?

LRK: One book may contain a flashback section, laying the groundwork for later happenings, rather in the way that O JERUSALEM prepares the ground for the next volume in the saga (as yet nameless) wherein Ali and Mahmoud appear in England in the winter of 1923, just after Holmes and Russell return from Dartmoor.

Other than that book, no, I have no intention of habitually living in the past, in the two or three stories I've got in the back of my head at the moment.