Island of the Mad

Island of the Mad is a 2018 novel by the American writer Laurie R. King and one of the later books in her series about Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. It opens in 1925 at the couple's home on the Sussex Downs, with a telephone call that interrupts an ordinary evening.

Lady Vivian Beaconsfield has spent most of her adult life in one asylum after another, and she has disappeared after an outing from Bedlam. Russell takes the case reluctantly, since the weeks before it have left her unsettled, and looking for the aunt turns into an investigation of the people who had responsibility for her and of the arrangements her family made.

The trail runs from London to Venice, where Russell looks for Lady Vivian among the expatriate society of the period, and the novel's material is the position of women whose families had both the money to place them somewhere and the authority to keep them there. King's series is written on the premise that the published accounts of Holmes were incomplete and that Russell was part of them, and this volume keeps the partnership at the centre while the setting widens.