Customer Reviews

Locked Rooms (Mary Russell Mystery 9)

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Locked Rooms" is Laurie King's eighth Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes mystery, and it is one of her best. After spending time in India and Japan, Holmes and his young wife set sail for San Francisco, California in 1924. The ostensible reason for their visit is so that Mary can sign papers connected with the estate left by her parents, who died ten years earlier in a tragic car crash. However, Mary has an even more urgent motive for revisiting her childhood home. She has been having disturbing nightmares, and she would like to exorcise the emotional demons that have been tormenting her.

In the three years that she has been married, Mary has revealed few details about her childhood to her husband. Her past is a confusing and frightening maze that she has been extremely reluctant to navigate. Mary knows that her parents lived through the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, but why does she have no memory of being with them during that time? Why does she blame herself for the accident that took the lives of her mother, father, and younger brother? Finally, what is the significance of Mary's recurring dreams about flying objects, a faceless man, and a house with locked rooms to which only she has the key?

Laurie King's novel addresses these and other questions against the backdrop of one of the world's most scenic cities. The author's colorful and beautifully detailed descriptive writing brings Prohibition-era San Francisco to life, with its clanging cable cars, its wealthy mansions, and its breathtaking waterfront views. "Locked Rooms" is a multi-layered and richly textured novel. It is also a satisfying puzzle in which Russell uncovers some long buried family secrets and reexamines her assumptions about her parents' deaths. King provides a close look at the inner workings of the Holmes' unconventional marriage. In addition, "Locked Rooms" gives the reader a mini-history of the San Francisco earthquake, with a well-researched account of how this devastating event affected the city's traumatized residents.

Readers will enjoy the book's deliciously complex plot as well as the large and diverse cast of characters. Among them are Mary's childhood friend, Flo Greenfield, who has become a child of the jazz age, Tom Long, the son of the faithful Chinese couple who worked for Mary's parents, and the writer Dashiell Hammett, who helps Holmes with his sleuthing. King uses an unusual narrative device that presents a dual perspective, both through Mary's eyes and the very different eyes of her husband.

"Locked Rooms" has it all--an exotic locale, engrossing characters, fascinating historical background, and a suspenseful, well-told story. Fans of Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell will be delighted and entertained by this solid entry in a very successful series.

Mary Russell, the young wife of elderly Sherlock Holmes, is one of the mystery genre's most interesting and admirable inventions. But she spends three quarters of this book as a psychological basket case, not her usual brilliantly analytical self. And for that reason I recommend it only for series regulars, who will doubtless find that delving into the depths of their heroine's troubled past is worth the journey, even though it cedes all of the brainpower in the first three quarters of the book to Holmes.

Laurie King is a superb descriptive writer but lately her ratios of plot to description seem to me to be somewhat off. Her books first started feeling a bit under-plotted and over-padded to me with "Justice Hall." Then, a couple of years ago, I heard her speak at a book fair on the national Mall in Washington and she told us that her publishers push and push her to up her page counts and I got the impression she thinks that's a mistake. Me, too, although I must admit the descriptive writing about post-quake San Francisco is really superb here and King has created some intriguing new characters that I think you'll enjoy.

I can see that there are definitely two camps in the reviews of this book: it's either the best in the series or just so-so. In my opinion, it's in the latter category. The reasons have been well-described by other reviewers; the plotting is weak, the book seems padded (especially with the memoirs of the Chinese servant), the main characters are seriously out-of character, and the dates regarding Mary's father joining the Army are confusing. The biggest problem, though, is that when you finally discover the secret behind her father's oh-so-mysterious actions and the family's death, what all those hundreds of pages have been building up to, the reason is just - laughable.

The best entries in this series - which in my opinion are The Moor, Oh Jerusalem, and The Game - are placed in an exotic locale. Apparently San Francisco is not exotic enough. However, there is a tidbit dropped about Russell and Holmes taking a brief sojourn in China on their way from India to the States, so I have hopes that that's where the next novel will take place.

This is the eigth in a series of novels by Laurie R. King which features the young detective Mary Russell and her partner of literary fame Sherlock Holmes. The title comes from a recurring dream that haunts Mary of a locked room to which she holds the key.

It is a series that keeps coming on strong, and this latest installment is one that faithful readers will truly appreciate. In it Mary returns to San Francisco, her childhood home, and confronts the trauma of her family's fatal car accident that only she survived. Plagued by a sense of guilt that she caused their deaths, Mary has never shared much of her past even with her husband, Sherlock Holmes. But is there something more sinister in her reticence to discuss the past? As they approach her home after ten years absence Mary becomes strangely unobservant and inwardly directed. Even when she is shot at two days after her arrival, she does not respond as she would have before. It is if she is in a cloud or hypnotic trance.

Laurie King does an admirable job of recreating San Francisco of the 1906 earthquake and of the Roaring 20's. The novel is rich in period detail, and contains a cast of well-developed characters which includes the young author Dashiell Hammett who, because of poor health, is making a career change from detective work to writing detective stories.

The suspense builds as first Holmes, and later Mary, begin to believe that her family was murdered to keep them from revealing something that is hidden in their old house. The book becomes a non-stop page turner as they discover that everyone associated with the family were murdered shortly after their fatal day. It seems that only Mary's departure for England right after the accident has saved her life so far. But now she is back, and she and Holmes will not sleep easy until the murderers are found.

Could this be the last Mary Russell mystery? Mary has lain to rest the ghosts that seem to have driven her so far. How will she proceed with her life now that the hidden torments are finally behind her? Laurie King has decided to give Mary a vacation and her latest novel is The Art of Detection, the first new addition to her Kate Martinelli series since 2000. I am sure that Mary could use the rest. We the readers will have to wait to see if it is rest or retirement for Mary.

Set in San Francisco in the early 1920's, Locked Rooms is a mesmerizing tale which begins as Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes leave India aboard a ship bound for California. Vivid, unsettling dreams begin to plague Russell, and Holmes believes the dreams, along with Russell's erratic behavior, are caused by repressed childhood memories. At first, Russell denies having lived in San Francisco for more than a very short time, but does confess that she has almost no conscious memory of her childhood between the ages of six and fourteen, when her parents and younger brother died in an automobile accident. Russell, thrown free of the car before it plunged off a cliff, was seriously injured both physically and emotionally.

Once in San Francisco, Russell meets with the family lawyer to settle legal affairs concerning her inheritance, and to obtain the keys to the family home. To her surprise, she is told that the house has been vacant and locked since her parents' untimely deaths, her father stipulating in his will that no one be allowed entry without a member of the family present. As Russell and Holmes explore the San Francisco area, and the family home, childhood memories begin to surface, revealing a twisted tale of violence and greed. Soon, it becomes apparent that many of the family acquaintances, during that time, have since died violent deaths. After an attempt to kill Russell is thwarted, Holmes is certain that the past has become the present, and that perhaps the tragic car crash was no accident.

Locked Rooms is rife with richly drawn characters: Tom Long, the adopted son of an Oriental couple who served the Russells as gardener and cook; Mrs. Adderley, an elderly neighbor who remembers the Russell family as they coped with the 1906 earthquake and fires; Aunt Dee, a friend to Mrs. Russell, and daughter Flo; Dashiell Hammett, a young writer who sometimes does investigative work for Pinkerton's to help support his wife and child; and San Francisco itself, from Chinatown to the wharf area, both in 1923 and during the 1906 earthquake that all but destroyed the city. Descriptions of the city and its people, during the earthquake and subsequent fires, are detailed and vivid, lending a wonderful, historical flavor to the book.

Locked Rooms is divided into five sections, with three of these divisions told in Mary Russell's first person voice and two in third person voice, describing Holmes' investigations into Russell's past. As with all Laurie King novels, the writing is superb, and Locked Rooms is a welcome addition to this series.

This is the 8th novel in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series created by Laurie King. After working with Rudyard Kipling's "Kim" in the last book ("The Game"), the married detective couple sail from India for their first trip to America and a trip to Mary's past.

The wonderful conceit of these books is that the retired and aging Mr. Holmes has found his soulmate in a much younger American woman. Ms. King usually works either literary characters or their authors into her plot and "Locked Rooms" is no different. The father of the American crime novel, Dashiel Hammett, makes a major appearance as a Pinkerton operative in his pre-novelist days (see his "Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man" as representative of his writing at its best). The city of San Francisco in the 1920's becomes a character as Ms. King effectively invokes the mood of a people as they rebuild from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake.

This is longest book of the series since "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" (1994) kicked it off and the most ambitious. As a murder mystery/psychological thriller, it introduces for the first time the voice of Mr. Holmes (prior books were told solely from Mary Russell's perspective). "Locked Rooms" stands on its own merits but the tale becomes richer if the reader has read the other novels to pick up on various references to their past.

For other homages to the literary creation of Arthur Conan Doyle, the reader is referred to "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes", edited with notes by Leslie Klinger (2004), to "A Slight Trick Of The Mind" by Mitch Cullen (2005), and "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" by Nicholas Meyer (1974).

I have read all the Mary Russell novels and found the first to be a revelation that I recommended to friends. However, I am reminded of a comment I once encountered about the Alexander Dumas novels that followed The Three Musketeers. It was that they were like sucessive cups of tea made from one tea bag - flavorful but weaker and weaker. This one is getting pretty weak. Frankly this novel's introspective turn does it no favors. The balance between characterization and action is off and the exploration of character is just not very interesting. If you want to see this balance handled better in this genre, check the new Maisie Dobbs novels of Jaquline Winspear. If this is the first Mary Rusell novel you have encountered, go to The Beekeepers Apprentice, the first - still a good read !

With this book, the series has finally flatlined. Gone are the heartpounding action, solid plotting, and well-crafted characters from books of yore. Mary Russell, once a brilliant, eccentric, active young woman, has been reduced to a neurasthenic mess, who spends much of the book buying clothes and hanging out with a girlfriend.. Sherlock Holmes, so vividly recreated in the first books, has become nothing more than a doting old granny, bringing Russell her tea or her hat, being irritatingly fussy. And the relationship between the two which began as passionate, argumentative and compelling, now seems devoid of even the merest trace of warmth or interest.

What plot there is depends a great deal too much on unlikely coincidence. There is no development of the villainous characters in this book, no cohesive action, no sense of risk or adventure.

It seems almost inexplicable that King would have allowed her once tough-minded, disciplined heroine to survive being shot, being kidnapped and imprisoned, and being forced into heroin addiction in earlier books, only to fall prey in this one to recovered childhood memories of a not-all-that traumatic past. This is not at all in keeping with Russell's demonstrated character, and is extremely disappointing.

So - with no plot, no character development, no compellingly complex villains or edge-of-your-seat denouement, this novel becomes a terrible waste of paper.

King is a much better writer than she shows herself as being here. The characters of Russell and Holmes deserve more from her, not to mention her readers.

Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King starts out strong as Sherlock Holmes and his wife, Mary Russell, head to San Francisco to complete legal business regarding Russell's inheritance. As they travel, Russell is plagued by a series of dreams that appear to be related to her barely remembered childhood. King does a wonderful job of giving a voice to Holmes, one of the few modern writers who does it well, and Mary Russell is an excellent counterpart for Holmes.

Where this book excels is in its description of San Francisco in the Twenties and during and immediately after the 1906 Earthquake. King vividly brings these scenes to life.

The mystery in this book, however, is decidedly disappointing and strained. It seems as though King had to twist too much to find a mystery to go along with her setting, and at the end I was left with a "Well, duh!" feeling.

Nevertheless, if you go into this book without the expectation of having a good mystery along with the novel, then you won't be disappointed. King has once again created a good cast of supporting characters, as well as giving life to the relationship between Homes and Russell.

I've enjoyed Laurie King's variations on the Sherlock Holmes revisited them since they first started to appear. For one thing, they are written with a great deal of intelligence and wit, from the viewpoint of Mary Russell, the young wife of a much older Holmes. One quickly forgets their age difference - once the pair is mid-adventure they are true equals. Because of this, Holmes never develops the egotistical vapidity that haunts some of Doyle's imitators.

Having taken the couple on a wild tour through the Middle East and Asia, Russell sends them of one what one would first expect to be calmer turf - San Francisco, where Mary was raised and where her family died in a terrible accident. It is to be a business trip, where Mary intends to see to her late father's holdings and prepare her home for sale. But things aren't that straightforward. Mary has buried all the painful memories that recall her guilt over her family's accident. Now dreams are haunting her, and, worse yet, she and Holmes have become targets in an inexplicable game.

Something happened in the desperate days of the San Francisco earthquake. Something that wrought a change in her father's relationship with his handyman and gardener, and nearly destroyed his marriage. Mary struggles with her recalcitrant memory, trying to piece events together. Holmes also investigates, but, for once, Mary resents his intrusion. To her this is her problem. Holmes finds himself conducting his own clandestine investigation. Not so much into the past, but to find out why someone is trying to kill Mary.

The result is a rich story, told from two separate viewpoints, full of a wealth of details about the earthquake. The tension between Mary and Holmes is kept at just the right pitch for good character development while avoiding dramatic extremes. The result is a highly successful novel that can stand on its own, if you wish. But I would recommend pursuing the whole series, where there is much to delight any fan of Sherlock Holmes.