“A Monstrous Regiment of Women” - Laurie R. King

💷 It was just my luck that this hold became available while I was reading “The Hollow of Fear”; it was just a little mind-bendy. Also, though this is book 2 in the series, Mary often refers to events that happened after book 1 so it feels as though I missed a book 1.5 (I didn’t).

💷 This is Mary’s case, start to finish. Sherlock Holmes is almost absent entirely for the first half. Despite the overtly feminist content, Mary does ultimately require rescue by Holmes, which is a little disappointing.

💷 AMRW was a neat, compact mystery. I also enjoyed reading about the effects of the Great War on women, and gender equality politics in the UK post-WWI. King builds dramatic tension like a pro (I was on edge when Mary found herself engaged in some cat burglary).

💷 King gives us a couple of Easter eggs (no spoilers here) involving Sherlock’s dead son, as well as Irene Adler. Ultimately, I will say that the surprise wasn’t so much in the “whodunit” as it was in Mary’s personal life (again, no spoilers!). And I’m still not sure how I feel about that revelation. I guess that’s what book 3 is meant to answer.

💷 The thematic focus of AMRW is the Lost Generation. King touches on the PTSD of soldiers who survived brutal trenches, and addiction forms an element of the case. She also develops a nuanced take on social justice and the place of women in the new social order. 

King spends time on women who left social dictates behind to serve, those who took up male-dominated jobs at home, and those who suffered losses. There was a generation of women who grew to maturity during the War and older women who were effectively running the country during the War, only to be brusquely pushed aside at War’s end.

💷 Women have recently won the right to vote in the UK, and the suffrage movement has splintered. King’s main characters argue that the true objective of the suffrage movement has hardly been reached; that the vote is a false victory. 

Margery Childe is of the camp that recognizes the magnitude of the work to be done. Her women’s organization appears to be a front designed to swindle wealthy, disaffected young women who served in the Great War. But Mary learns they are in fact doing good work to advance women’s reproductive rights, health, safety, and education.

Margery is working on finding chinks in the authorized King James translation of the Bible to support equality of womankind; Mary tells her the original verse in Hebrew actually is far more powerful in its discourse on a maternal God, which had been surgically removed in the translations. I thought the following excerpts demonstrate the theological argument.

💷 I was confused by the implications regarding Margery’s mysticism and “healing”. What are we to believe? I assumed it was clever acting, but never understood how she managed it. King doesn’t elaborate.