Pirate King, by Laurie R. King

Could Sherlock Holmes have married? What would his wife be like? Where would Watson go and what would he do?

Pirate King answers some of these questions. Mary Russell is married to Holmes, who sends her out on a mission to infiltrate a movie production company which is suspected of being involved in illegal activities, which is just about to make a movie about a movie production company making a movie of The Pirates of Penzance, only the movie company in the movie gets involved somehow with real pirates, and then somehow the real (I mean, real in the book) movie company gets involved with real pirates, too. Is your head spinning yet? And all of this is translated by a certain Fernando Pessoa, who apparently (if one can believe the afterword) was a real poet of this time period, who has multiple heteronyms. What is a heteronym, you ask? Read the book!

In spite of the unbelievably convoluted plot, the book was a light and frolicsome read. Or maybe because of the plot? I especially enjoyed the interchanges between Mr. and Mrs. Holmes and wished for more of them. This book does not touch on Watson, but apparently it is not the first book by Ms. King about Mrs. Holmes, so perhaps an earlier book discusses Watson.

Laurie R. King is a new author to me, but has several books to her credit, which means by TBR list just grew by leaps and bounds again. Sigh.

I would recommend this to book to anyone mystery-lover who's willing to imagine Holmes married and who can try to keep several threads of a tricky plot straight.