Friday Memes: Island of the Mad by Laurie R. King

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Sherlock Holmes and I stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing down sadly at the tiny charred corpse.

Startling until you read down a bit more to find out the Mary has burned a chicken that should have been dinner.

Friday 56: 

"We have a motor -- just tell Lily when you want to go and Freddie will run you over."

But first, I needed to do the rounds of the main house's servants, the estate manager, and the stable hands. That took me the rest of the morning, and at the end of it, I had added little to my story of knowledge about Vivian Beaconsfield other than their opinion that she was an odd 'un -- an affectionate judgment, rather than condemnatory.

This week I am reading Island of the Mad by Laurie R. King. This is the latest Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell novel. Here is the description from Amazon:

With Mrs. Hudson gone from their lives and domestic chaos building, the last thing Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, need is to help an old friend with her mad and missing aunt.

Lady Vivian Beaconsfield has spent most of her adult life in one asylum after another, since the loss of her brother and father in the Great War. And although her mental state seemed to be improving, she’s now disappeared after an outing from Bethlem Royal Hospital . . . better known as Bedlam.

Russell wants nothing to do with the case—but she can’t say no. And at least it will get her away from the challenges of housework and back to the familiar business of investigation. To track down the vanished woman, she brings to the fore her deductive instincts and talent for subterfuge—and of course enlists her husband’s legendary prowess. Together, Russell and Holmes travel from the grim confines of Bedlam to the winding canals and sun-drenched Lido cabarets of Venice—only to find the foreboding shadow of Benito Mussolini darkening the fate of a city, an era, and a tormented English lady of privilege.