Laurie R. King - Locked Rooms (2005)
Reviewed by Yvette Banek
If someone told me that the extraordinarily talented author Laurie King was the living reincarnation of Arthur Conan Doyle, I’d believe it, but I’d say, “No, she’s even better.”
King has taken a mythic creation, Sherlock Holmes, and, armed with nothing but her own genius and a complete understanding of the character’s aura, shaped a larger-than-life anachronism into a living, breathing 20th century man. As an unabashed fan, let me state that this is quite my favorite series of books being written today so anything I write about it is undoubtedly suspect.
Nonetheless, I persevere.
Locked Rooms is the eighth installment in an extraordinary series which began with the memorable debut, The Beekeeper's Apprentice in 1994. Beekeper introduced us to King’s stellar creation, the brilliant young student, Mary Russell, a precocious girl of fifteen whom family tragedy has exiled to England’s lonely Sussex Downs in the care of a despised aunt. It is 1915 and WWI still rages when we first meet Mary, nose buried in a book, as she literally stumbles across a retired elderly man who is ostensibly studying the habits of bees at the side of a lonely country road.
And so the saga begins.
Only King could’ve created a woman brilliant enough, eccentric enough and self-sufficient enough to interest Holmes the man as well as Holmes the detective.
We’ve come full circle, because it is the dreadful tragedy (the loss of her entire family in a horrific automobile accident in California) which initially sent the lone survivor, Mary, to England in the first book, which now comes around to be fully explained in this year’s installment, Locked Rooms.
In last year’s The Game, Holmes and Mary, or Russell as she’s more commonly known in the books, traveled deep into the colorful interior of India to hunt down spies and came across Kipling’s most famous creation: Kim, the young lad who’d spent his hardscrabble early years spying for the Crown, now a man full grown. On the return sea voyage home, Russell is plagued by nightmares and long forgotten hints about a "locked room," soon she and Holmes are drawn to Russell’s mysterious childhood home in San Francisco.
“Even before we arrived, dreams had been pounding at the door of my mind; in the three days since the ship had docked on Monday morning, I had been arrested, confronted with a bucket-load of oddities, seen the evidence of a house-breaking, met a large slice of my past, been attacked on the street, and had a serious argument with my husband.
“But the deadly ambush laid for us Thursday as we walked in all innocence across the hotel lobby reduced the rest to little more than specks of dust along our way.”
When it becomes apparent that the ‘accident’ that originally claimed her family was actually murder in disguise, Russell and Holmes must hunt for the culprit and the motivation buried in her family’s distant past. Digging up secrets is always a dangerous thing and when Russell’s life is threatened, the husband and wife realize that time is of the essence. In this most dangerous endeavor, they’re aided by detective and future famous writer-in-the-making, Dashiell Hammett, (author of The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man and many other novels) whom Holmes has stumbled upon while lurking about in dark alleys.
As the dark story of Russell’s past finally unfolds, she realizes that she’s squandered part of her life suffering, not only from survivor guilt, but from the almost unimaginable burden of believing she’d been the cause of her parents’ and her younger brother’s deaths. When several more murders come to light, the true nature of a merciless killer who will sink to any depths to protect his secret is revealed.
It’s a relief, finally, to have the truth of Mary Russell’s past come out. I often worried about her, wondering if what she believed to be the truth and the awful guilt which she must’ve felt would eventually do her in. Thankfully, Laurie King has taken mercy on her readers and revealed, at last, a truth, which while awful, is not quite as dreadful as Russell first believed. A weight has been lifted from her life and I wonder where she’ll go from here. The next book will tell, I suppose.
I blame Laurie King for creating characters which seem so real, that we spend time worrying about their futures. As if real life weren’t worrying enough these days.
This is a series which should really be read in order, but I recommend that after beginning with The Beekeeper's Apprentice, you skip the second book to go on to O’ Jerusalem and then double back to A Monstrous Regiment of Women and then so on and so forth. This is the progression that makes the most sense to me.
Posted by Yvette Banek in Book Reviews | Permalink
Comments
I have become entranced by this series! I agree that the thing to do is read them in the order written as Yvette suggests. I just finished "The Moor" and can't wait to get on to the next book. Ms. King simply has to keep this series going - the books are completely absorbing and so believable.
Posted by: Bernadine | Sep 4, 2008 8:44:09 AM
