Mystery Women Authors

Laurie R King

Biography

Laurie King is third-generation native of the San Francisco Bay Area, but since her marriage to an Anglo-Indian professor she has lived briefly in twenty countries on five continents. She and her husband have two children. They live mostly in California, but also have a house in Oxford.

Photo by Trudi Starbeck-Miller

Books

New Release

A Darker Place

With her debut novel, A Grave Talent, Laurie R. King became the first novelist since Patricia Cornwell to win prizes for Best First Crime Novel on both sides of the Atlantic. Now, in her first stand-alone novel, the Edgar Award and John Creasey Award winner brings us an intelligent, engrossing drama of good and evil--once again showing how Laurie King breaks every rule to craft some of the most fascinating novels in crime fiction.

Anne Waverly is a respected university professor. Few know that, eighteen years ago, her own unwitting act cost Anne her husband and seven-year-old daughter. Fewer still know that her past and her academic specialty--alternative religious movements--have made her a brilliant FBI operative. Four times she has infiltrated suspect communities, escaping her own memories of loss and carnage to find a measure of atonement.
Now, as she begins to savor life once more, she has no intention of taking another assignment.

Until, that is, she is given an envelope containing details of the Change group and its leaders, whose Arizona site houses over one hundred children and a school admired by even the local authorities. Outsiders have found these children, many of them rescued from abuse, healthy and content--but far too well-behaved....

Soon Anne--as the eager, pliable seeker Ana Wakefield--is on her way to the red cliffs and high desert air of the Change compound. As she explores its enigmatic mixture of mysticism, hierarchy, and trickery, she grows unexpectedly close to two abandoned children fostered by Change. Fourteen-year-old Jason Delgado is a tough, sexy, wary street kid; his timid, silent little sister Dulcie reminds Anne all too much of her own lost
daughter.

Slowly, she comes to see that this is no ordinary community and hers is no ordinary mission. For, far from appeasing the demons of her past, this assignment is sweeping her back into their clutches.

In A Darker Place, King masterfully reinvents the novel of psychological suspense, creating a complex and iron-willed woman who, in searching for the truth among the darker places of her past, discovers her own redemption.

Published Bantam 1999

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Miss Mary Russell Mysteries

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Long retired, Sherlock Holmes quietly pursues his study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. He never imagines he would encounter anyone whose intellect matched his own, much less an audacious teenage girl with a penchant for detection. Miss Mary Russell becomes Holmes' pupil and quickly hones her talent for deduction, disguises, and danger. But when an elusive villain enters the picture, their partnership is put to a real test. (From the Publisher)

Published Bantam Books 1994

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A Monstrous Regiment of Women

The dawn of 1921 finds Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes's brilliant young apprentice, about to come into a considerable inheritance. Nevertheless, she still enjoys her nighttime prowls in disguise through London's grimy streets, where one night she encounters an old friend, now a charity worker among the poor. Veronica Beaconsfield introduces Russell to the New Temple of God, a curious amalgam of church and feminist movement, led by the enigmatic, electrifying Margery Childe. Part suffragette, part mystic, she lives quite well for a woman of God from supposedly humble origins. Despite herself,Russell is drawn ever deeper into Childe's circle. When Veronica has a near-fatal accident--and turns out to be the fourth bluestocking in the group to meet with misadventure after changing her will--Russell and Holmes launch a quiet investigation. But the Temple may bring the newly rich Russell far closer to heaven than she would like... (From the Publisher)

Published Bantam Books 1995

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A Letter of Mary

Sherlock Holmes and his scholarly companion Mary Russell are caught up in an exciting mystery when an archaeologist leaves them with a treasured find, a papyrus supposedly written by Mary Magdalene. When the archaeologist winds up dead and someone attempts to make off with the artifact, Holmes and Russell become embroiled in a rollicking story filled with political intrigue and highbrow sleuthing. (From Amazon.com)

Published Bantam Books 1998

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The Moor

Holmes and Russell are summoned to Devonshire to solve a tin miner's mysterious death. Lonely Dartmoor provides plenty of opportunities for King to both relate the haunting legends of that part of the world and offer some amusing revisions to one of Holmes's most famous cases, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Though Holmes purists might resent the liberties taken with their hero, readers in search of a strong female protagonist, some fascinating local history, and spooky ambience will enjoy The Moor.

Published hardcover Jan 1998 St Martins

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Kate Martinelli Mysteries

A Grave Talent

Seventeen years ago, a jury found Vaun Adams guilty of strangling a six-year-old girl, and sent Vaun to prison. One year ago, an international panel of art critics judged her the century's greatest woman painter. Now children are dying again in the community of eccentrics where the notorious artist has taken shelter. Katarina Cecilia Martinelli (Casey to her friends, Kate to her few intimates), newly of the SFPD, and Alonzo Hawkin, in charge of the investigation, are charged with finding the truth: Is Vaun a murderess? Or is she the perfect victim? (From the Publisher)

An Edgar Award Winner

Published Bantam Books 1993

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To Play the Fool

Celebrated author Laurie R. King dazzles mystery lovers once again in this, her second Kate Martinelli mystery. The story unfolds as a band of homeless people cremate a beloved dog in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. When it comes to incidents like this, the authorities are willing to overlook a few broken regulations. But three weeks later, after the dog's owner gets the same fiery send-off, the SFPD knows it has a serious problem on its hands. Other than the fact that they're dealing with a particularly grisly homicide, Inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner, Al Hawkin, have little else to go on. They have a homeless victim without a positive ID, a group of witnesses who have little love for the cops, and a possible suspect, known only as Brother Erasmus. Kate learns that Erasmus is well-acquainted with the park's homeless and with the rarefied atmosphere of Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, yet he remains an enigma to all. It's apparent that he is by no means crazy--but he is a fool. Kate begins the frustrating task of interrogating a man who communicates only through quotations. Trying to learn something of his history leads her along a twisting road to a disbanded cult, long-buried secrets, the thirst for spirituality, and the hunger for bloody vengeance. (From the Publisher)

Published Bantam Books 1995

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With Child

San Francisco homicide detective Kate Martinelli finds one of her cases has become, to her horror, tragically entangled with her personal life. As Kate's life partner, Lee, slowly--so slowly--recovers from the effects of the gunshot wound that crippled her in A Grave Talent, she decides that she must spend some time on her own, a move that Kate can only see as rejection. Lonely, Kate befriends the bright, quirky, twelve-year-old Jules. When the girl's parents go on a trip, Kate agrees to care for her.

Rashly Kate decides to drive with Jules to northern Washington, to "drop in" on the farm where Lee is staying with an aunt. But during the trip, in a rural area where a serial killer has been victimizing young girls, Jules disappears.

Published Bantam Books 1996

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Web site address

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Other sites for Laurie R King

This site lists all of Laurie R King's books and gives you a direct link to Amazon.com for purchasing.

http://www.digizen.net/member/rmaples/mystery/KingLauR.htm

This site details tours for Laurie R King.

http://www.bookwire.com/BookInfo.Author$1023

Tangled Web UK- A Crime and Mystery Fiction Journal details more information and

reviews on Laurie R King's books.

Page created by Leone Moffat

Last updated 03-Mar-2002