Mary Russell comes home

[bibliogramma]

Locked Rooms, Laurie R. King

Laurie King’s Mary Russell mysteries, about a brilliant young woman of a most determined character and her mentor, partner, lover and eventually spouse, the Great Detective himself, have been captivating me for some time now.

What’s interesting about the structure of the series itself is that, rather than continuing to write novels that are exclusively pastiches of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, King has taken to making each new volume a study in a specific style of mystery writing – the country house mystery, the spy mystery, the adventure thriller, to name a few.

Locked Rooms is a psychological thriller. We’ve long known that there is a tragic incident in Mary’s past, an accident that left her an orphan and has also left her with psychological scars that have been concealed as best as possible but never healed. Now Mary and Holmes have come to San Francisco, Mary’s home and the site of the accident – but as she begins to recover memories that have been suppressed, it becomes clear that there is much more to both the accident that killed the rest of her family, and to her memories of her past, than anyone has suspected. And whatever is buried in her past is enough to make someone willing to commit murder to ensure that it is never uncovered.

Another enjoyable chapter in the Mary Russell story.