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    Pirate King
    Pirate King
    Pirate King
    Audiobook11 hours

    Pirate King

    Written by Laurie R. King

    Narrated by Jenny Sterlin

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King's books have received high praise from critics and have earned the Edgar, Creasey, Wolfe, Lambda, and Macavity awards. As Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes embark on their 11th adventure together, they find themselves immersed in the world of silent filmmaking. Here, the pirates are real-and unlike the shooting done with a camera, this sort can be deadly.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 6, 2011
    ISBN9781501984310
    Pirate King
    Author

    Laurie R. King

    Laurie R. King is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Kate Martinelli novels and the acclaimed Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes mysteries, as well as a few stand-alone novels. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first in her Mary Russell series, was nominated for an Agatha Award and was named one of the Century’s Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. A Monstrous Regiment of Women won the Nero Wolfe Award. She has degrees in theology, and besides writing she has also managed a coffee store and raised children, vegetables, and the occasional building. She lives in northern California.

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    Reviews for Pirate King

    3.5/5

    405 ratings69 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Once the “movie company” and pirates were on the boat the story took off. The set up for this book was a bit tedious ( compared to her others). I am still a fan and enjoyed listening.
    • 2/5
      From my Cannonball Read 6 Review...

      Hmmm. I can’t tell if this is a bad book, or just isn’t the book that I wanted or needed it to be. I’m in the midst of a bit of a self-improvement kick (and my books this year will likely reflect that), and bought this one during one of my many ill-advised book store visits. It looked interesting, and even seemed to offer suggestions for people like me, who have ‘good’ jobs but just feel like they might be in the wrong career and are looking for something different.

      The book starts with a whole lot of self-assessment. Some of it is really interesting and some of it seems to require a whole lot of self-reflection that could mean the book could take a reader months to get through. Some of it feels like a glorified Cosmo quiz, but some of it really did get me thinking about what I want out of the work I do to make money, and what I need to do to get there.

      After sixty pages of self-assessments, worksheets and quizzes, the author breaks her advice down into chapters to address common problems people who are unhappy in their work are likely to face:
      -Finding meaning in work
      -At a good point (financially) and not able to take a pay cut
      -Current very negative work environment
      -Bored
      -Desire to run a business
      -Close to retirement

      Obviously close to retirement wasn’t really applicable to me, but the rest did, at times, apply to how I’ve felt about my career over the past few years, so I read through them. Each was filled with some more quizzes and attempts at forcing self-reflection, but I think the book tried to be all things to all people and so ended up not giving me enough to work with in any given area. I think it did help me sort through my thoughts on starting my own business, as well as my desire to have a job that makes a difference in people’s lives, but I didn’t finish reading it with any sort of concrete action plan. Maybe that’s on me, or maybe it’s on the book, but either way I can’t really recommend this to anyone who is struggling with where to go in their career.
    • 4/5
      A great book for the seasoned professional who wakes up and realizes she wants something...different. Jansen looks at the most common reasons for deciding you "need a change" - that your job no longer has meaning, that you're bored and don't see more challenges ahead, that you've suffered a job loss or been kicked around by your employer, that you yearn to start your own business, or that you really want to be retired. Each of these chapters contains exercises to get at the heart of what you're looking for, and both the chapters and the end of the book contain extensive suggestions for books and web sites to provide even more information. The book is easy to read and is a wonderful addition to professional job coaching, as well as worth reading on its own to help you make your next career move a satisfying one.
    • 4/5
      In England's budding silent-film industry, megalomaniac Randolph Fflytte is king. At the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate rumors of criminal activities. At Lisbon rehearsals for "Pirate King", based on Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance", thirteen blond-haired, blue-eyed actresses meet the real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. But when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, troubles escalate.
    • 3/5
      I usually like the books in this series but this seemed never to click with me. These Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes are always a bit of a stretch--with reality and with the inevitable coincidences--but that usually works. It didn't for me here. It wasn't bad but I never got to the point where I cared what happened to the key people.
    • 4/5
      Mary Russell is placed with a film crew on its way to Portugal and Morocco to film a variation of Pirates of Penzance. Is the film company involved in gun running and drug-smuggling? or is something more sinister afoot?
    • 4/5
      A very enjoyable romp! I've been a little obsessed with Pirates of Penzance this year, so the combination of it with my favorite mystery series made me one very happy reader.
    • 4/5
      Hit the spot. A light hearted, well written tale. Not in the mood to be mean with the stars!
    • 5/5
      A very fun installment of the Mary Russell mysteries. Personally, I like Gilbert and Sullivan but Mary doesn't and yet the book abounds with G&S materials and references. There was no deep mystery here but a lot of action and suspense. This is not for a first time reader of the series because too many things are references to the past and not much explained for the uninitiated.
    • 3/5
      Sherlock. Good for Anglophiles (not my cupp-a.
    • 4/5
      The first half dragged and I was going to stop but I am glad I didn't. The second half was great.
    • 3/5
      Honestly, not my Fave Mary Russell... but still very enjoyable.
    • 2/5
      This seems to have been the author experimenting with something new, but it's severely lacking in the parts that make me enjoy the series so much: suspense, detection, introspection on Mary's part.
    • 3/5
      The first half is slow, almost tedious in spots. Action speeds up enough in the second half to almost make up for it, but this is my least favorite Russell / Holmes book so far. It helps if the reader is familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance."
    • 5/5
      This is absolutely my most favorite series ever! Every book in the series is fantastic-5 star! If you like Sherlock Holmes, you have to read this pastiche. King's is the best one I've read yet.
    • 3/5
      This one's fine, but not nearly among the best in the series. Not enough mystery, not enough Holmes, a bit too much repetition, &c. If you've read all the rest you'll want to read this one too, but I found it rather less compelling than the others.
    • 2/5
      I tried to like this book. The first few I read in this series were very good, very Holmesesque. Then the series became more like a history book and not fun at all. I gave up reading more in the series until a friend told I needed to give another try with this "pirate" book. Not enough Holmes in the book up to the point I quit reading.
    • 5/5
      This is the best Mary Russell novel that King has written in a while. It was much less dark than her books have been lately and had a lot of twists and turns to keep the reader entertained.
    • 3/5
      Not my favorite Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes adventure. Mary - and later Sherlock - head off with a film crew to find out why criminal activity seems to surround their productions. The current production involves Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. I think it was just too slow for me and too focused on the film production.
    • 2/5
      I was very disappointed in this Mary Russell book. Too many characters and a pointless plot. I was bored.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable as always. Very interesting, if large, cast of characters. Captures the way you think early film making felt. Actually, kind of feels that way now.
    • 3/5
      Way back when my daughter was a youngish teen, she and I enjoyed mightily the storied of The Beekeeper's Apprentice and the ongoing story of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. So recently, in my hunt for mystery authors for Bloody Words Stormy Weather in Halifax, I grabbed this book from the library to see what Mary Russell was up to now.
      Well, maybe I'm older and more cynical (I read Swedish authors, after all) but this book didn't grab me at all, with it's lengthy and needlessly complex setup. I feel certain that, had I stuck it out, I'd find a nugget of goodness there - King is a fluid writer and often funny and I enjoy that. But after many many pages, I had to toss it into the "return to library" pile.
      Perhaps it would have been better to read the series again from the beginning, but I didn't enjoy them that much. I find Holmes a bit annoying at the best of times ("Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do" and all that) and really hate deus ex machina mysteries where the magical detective whips the secret out from under his cloak (it always seems to be a him) at the end.
      Still, for fans of Holmes, it's interesting to see him as a non-drug-addicted, married man. For me, something doesn't fit.
    • 3/5
      I felt decidedly mixed about this one. This is the eleventh book in the Mary Russell series, which gives Sherlock Holmes a romantic and professional partner--and it works. Well, almost always. The series truly is a favorite of mine and usually hits the spot with its mix of Sherlock Holmes pastiche, mystery, and early 20th century historical fiction. I've grown to love Mary as a character in her own right. This one though, takes an entirely different tone than usual--in fact the first half plays as farce. It annoyed and bored me for a lot of that first half, and I considered abandoning it--at least until it regained the promise of it's subtitle: "A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. Because for that first half there was no suspense and almost nothing of Sherlock Holmes.It did redeem itself for me in the second half, but this certainly wouldn't be where I'd pick up the series, and if this is where you did, and you didn't care for it, I'd try again--the first in the series, The Beekeeper's Apprentice is one of the best--but so are several of the other books. I'm not the only one to be disappointed in The Pirate King--this has the lowest rating of any book in the series on Goodreads, averaging 3.34 stars while most installments are over four. I think what I find a weakness in the book comes ironically from a source of the strength of the series. The books are varies in tone, theme, settings--even narrative devices. And as a friend pointed out, the light-hearted nature of the book does make a welcome change of pace after the grimness of the last two books. But even though humor is a welcome element in the books, the humor here was either too broad for my tastes, or just not something King's forte.That said, I did give it three stars because ultimately I enjoyed it, and am glad I finished it. There's only one more book in the series now for me to read, and I'm going to feel a pang when I finish it and have to wait for King to publish the next one.
    • 4/5
      Synopsis: The Pirates of Penzance, sort of, is the setting of this Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell tale. Russell leaves with a film crew to determine if someone in Fflytte’s group is selling drugs and/or smuggling arms. Mixed in with this bizarre congregation are real pirates, Mycroft’s operatives, and eventually Sherlock.Review: If you know the music from the Pirates of Penzance, do not be surprised if you end up hearing it all day long. This is a good romp, although it would have been nice to see Sherlock earlier. Russell carries the story quite well.
    • 2/5
      This seems to have been the author experimenting with something new, but it's severely lacking in the parts that make me enjoy the series so much: suspense, detection, introspection on Mary's part.
    • 5/5
      Fun on the continent and in Africa. I love the descriptions of Morocco; I spent time there 40 years ago.
    • 3/5
      Pirate King was definitely different than the rest of the books in the series. It had a much lighter feel; more adventure than detection, I'd say. I made the mistake of starting this at bedtime and stayed up til 3 AM to finish.
    • 3/5
      Pirate King is a likable book, a humorous mystery about a movie about making a movie of the Pirates of Penzance. Mary Russell, King's new partner for Holmes, provides a wonderful narration with a biting wit and a "proper" sensibility that provides a great foil to the flamboyance and "drama" created by the director, producer, and delightfully annoying cast.The Holmes character has only a bit part in this story,which is oddly pleasant because we get to know Mary much better than in some of the other books in this series. Mary is the sort of character who is easy to dislike when you first meet her in The Beekeeper's Apprentice, but whose strength and fearless nature grow on you over time. A fast and enjoyable read.
    • 2/5
      I've enjoyed most of Laurie King's Sherlock Holmes spin-offs, but this one was a yawner. The up-coming tricksy plot twist was visible from the moment she introduced the key plot-twisting character. Disappointing.
    • 3/5
      Overall I thought this to be a well written volume filled with interesting characters, a mystery that keeps the reader turning the pages, and even some humor mixed in here and there. So I did enjoy this book. I do, however, have some criticisms that kept the star numbers down. First, while she kept the general 'flavor' of the Holmes' books, I was disappointed that the actual appearances for Holmes were slim. I confess that this is my first King book and my first experience with Mary Russell as well, so I do not have gauge by which to measure this book against her others, and it may be that Holmes finds a larger part of her other adventures. I hope so, because I would like to venture into some of the other Russell stories, but I would also like to see more Holmes. My second criticism is one of personal taste: I don't care much for Gilbert and Sullivan and it is their "Pirates of Penzance" that forms the central plot. This made the book tedious for me in places. But, again, I recognize and emphasize that this is my personal foible and should not necessarily detract others from this as a potential read. Again, overall, I enjoyed the book and found it to be well written, entertaining, and engaging.