TEHRAN – “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen” by Laurie R. King has been published in Persian.

Zahra Bakhtari is the translator of the detective story published by Qatreh.

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles onto him on the Sussex Downs. 

Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. 

Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern, twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégée and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. 

They are soon called to Wales to help Scotland Yard find the kidnapped daughter of an American senator, a case of international significance with clues that dip deep into Holmes’s past. 

Full of brilliant deduction, disguises and danger, “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice”, the first book of the Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries, is remarkably beguiling.

“The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” is the first book in the Mary Russell series by King. It was nominated for the Agatha best novel award and was deemed a Notable Young Adult book by the American Library Association.

The series that this novel begins currently stands at twenty novels, with the latest having been published in 2021.

Edgar-winning mystery writer King writes series and standalone novels.

Her 2018 novel, “Island of the Mad”, sees Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes travel from London’s Bedlam to the glitter of Venice’s Lido, where Young Things and the friends of Cole Porter pass Mussolini’s Blackshirts in the streets. 

The Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series follows a brilliant young woman who becomes the student, then the partner, of the great detective. 

The Stuyvesant and Grey series takes place in Europe between the Wars. The Kate Martinelli series follows an SFPD detective’s cases on a female Rembrandt, a holy fool and more.

King lives in northern California, which serves as a backdrop for some of her books.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of Laurie R. King’s novel “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice”.

MMS/YAW