The God of the Hive

The God of the Hive is a 2010 mystery novel by the American author Laurie R. King and the tenth book in the Mary Russell series, featuring the married detectives Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.

The novel begins almost immediately after the close of the preceding book, The Language of Bees. Russell and Holmes are each following a trail separately, trying to expose a ruthless antagonist and to keep Holmes's artist son, Damian Adler, and Adler's three-year-old half-Chinese daughter Estelle safe. The search involves British practitioners of a religious cult called the Children of Lights. The case begins as a problem in one of Holmes's beehives and leads to a murderous cult, which is how the book ties the domestic material to the pursuit.

The separated structure is the plot's engine. The pair maintain contact only by coded messages and cryptic notes while the police and an enemy with powerful connections pursue them, so the investigation has to be conducted by two people who cannot rely on each other's immediate support. The separation is forced rather than chosen, because the police are also looking for them and everything they send each other has to be coded.