When Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes returned from their vacation abroad they found a compelling new mystery awaiting them. One of Sherlock’s more remote bee hives had suddenly lost the entire colony of bees. They had all swarmed and just abandoned their home. Normally a new queen will swarm and take a good many workers and drones away with her to start a new colony but the old colony will continue. This time was different and it would not do to just let it go. Mary and Sherlock must find out what caused the bees to leave.
The mystery of the missing bees suddenly took a back seat when Sherlock’s son, Damien, whom he had only met one time before arrives to seek Sherlock’s help in finding his wife. She and his 4 year old daughter had gone missing and Damien is beside himself with worry. Before long Sherlock and Mary are up against a number of bizarre crimes; the ritual killing of a goat, a suspicious suicide at Stonehenge, a murder at another medieval monument and the weird religion of Damien’s wife that seems to involve a lot of self-sacrifice and apparently some physical sacrifice.
Mary tracks the killer and Damien finding that at the final location of the planned ritual blood-letting Damien and his daughter had been kidnapped. In the exciting final chapters Mary and Sherlock prevent the killing, saving Damien and the little girl. Mary is relieved that she will not have to “tell the bees that their keeper has been killed”. You see the bees have a language and they must be told whenever their keeper has had something happen to him.
But in the postscript, King explains that due to the presence of the killer’s diary in his coat breast pocket the bullet that knocked him down did not kill him. The police did not find a body nor a ritual dagger crafted from the iron meteor nor even an injured man who had to be treated in the doctor’s surgery, just some blood on the stone alter and the ground. The police conclude that it must have been some sort of youthful prank gone awry. But Mary knows different and according to the author the story is ‘to be continued…’
“The Language of Bees” is a pretty well told tale that hangs on tight to the legendary character of Sherlock Holmes while allowing the real investigator to be his lively and intelligent wife, Mary Russell. At times the story is funny and it develops at a steady pace that is both interesting and satisfying to the mystery aficionado. I give this one a 7 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
