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    Locked Rooms: A Novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
    Locked Rooms: A Novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
    Locked Rooms: A Novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
    Audiobook14 hours

    Locked Rooms: A Novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

    Written by Laurie R. King

    Narrated by Jenny Sterlin

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King has won sweeping critical acclaim and an impressive collection of awards for her writing. Although other writers have tried, no one has matched King's ability to capture the allure of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. En route to San Francisco to settle her family's estate, Mary Russell, in the company of husband Sherlock Holmes, falls prey to troubling dreams-and even more troubling behavior. In 1906, when Mary was six, the city was devastated by a catastrophic earthquake. For years Mary has insisted she lived elsewhere at the time. But Holmes knows better. Soon it is clear that whatever unpleasantness Mary wanted to forget hasn't forgotten her. A series of mysterious deaths leads Russell and Holmes from the winding streets of Chinatown to the unspoken secrets of a parent's marriage and the tragic "accident" that Mary alone survived. What Russell discovers is that even a forgotten past never dies, and it can kill again
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 1, 2005
    ISBN9781440781209
    Locked Rooms: A Novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
    Author

    Laurie R. King

    Laurie R. King is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Kate Martinelli novels and the acclaimed Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes mysteries, as well as a few stand-alone novels. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first in her Mary Russell series, was nominated for an Agatha Award and was named one of the Century’s Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. A Monstrous Regiment of Women won the Nero Wolfe Award. She has degrees in theology, and besides writing she has also managed a coffee store and raised children, vegetables, and the occasional building. She lives in northern California.

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    Reviews for Locked Rooms

    4/5

    660 ratings53 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Best Mary Russell book so far. Narrator is fantastic. The nuances to all the voices are first class!
    • 5/5
      Laurie never disappoints! This may well be my favorite so far in this series. I endeavor to read the books in order and so far I have been able to do that.
    • 4/5
      love this series waiting for the next one
      exciting adventure in India
    • 4/5
      I thought this one was going to end up my least favourite of the series when it started. I've been listening to these on audio and I have sometimes struggled with the author's beautifully written but ultimately long descriptive passages. Couple this with the fact that I lost patience with Mary and her inability to act rationally pretty early on and I spent some moments moaning at my car's audio system to "get on with it already!" Then the author changed the POV to Holmes. She's never done that before and I was even more apprehensive about the book, but in was at this point, in fact, that the book took off for me. To do Holmes justice requires that the language become more succinct and I found the alternating view points were just what I needed to temper my impatience with Mary's internal rambles. There's not much "mystery" in this book; the author introduced characters who served no purpose other than to provide for the existence of the villain so I was never in any doubt who it was, but there's so much more to the book than just the 'whodunnit' and I enjoyed the ride as all the pieces came together. The writing is beautiful, rich and descriptive (even the lengthy internal monologues - especially those, actually) and ultimately I was riveted as I always am. I keep telling myself that I should just read these so I can skim the monologues but Jenny Sterling's brilliant narration keeps me coming back to the audio again and again.
    • 5/5
      After their adventures in India Holmes and Russell make a long-delayed side trip to San Francisco. Mary hasn't been there since she was fourteen and was the only survivor of the car accident that killed her parents and younger brother. She was gravely injured and traumatized by the accident. She did some work with psychiatrist Dr. Ginzburg before moving to England to live with her aunt.Now it is time to meet with her lawyers and make some decisions about the businesses and properties left to her when her parents died. But Mary is being troubled by three recurring dreams that are causing insomnia and lack of appetite. Holmes is worried for her. When they arrive in San Francisco, they are confronted with even more mystery. A strange codicil to her father's will has kept their family home empty since it requires that entry is only permitted with a member of the family. The house is neglected and the grounds are vastly overgrown. But it appears that someone has been inside and searched the place. Mary has always insisted that she was not in San Francisco during the 1906 quake and fires but she learns that she was which explains the first dream about flying objects. The second dream about a faceless man takes longer to figure out but it also had its origin during 1906. The third dream about secret rooms takes the longest to figure out. While Mary is meeting with lawyers and meeting old friends that she barely remembers, Holmes is busy looking into the past the Mary has forgotten. Holmes even recruits Dashiell Hammett as his irregular since Mary is unavailable. Holmes comes to the conclusion that the accident that Mary has blamed herself for was really a murder designed to look like an accident. This story is different than many of the earlier adventures in that there are sections told from Mary's point of view and other sections told from Sherlock's point of view. It was a wonderful adventure that illuminated Mary's past both for the reader and for Mary. I loved the San Francisco setting and the various characters including some residents of Chinatown.
    • 4/5
      I surprised myself by giving this 4 stars - might get downgraded later - but I really did enjoy it. The construction of the book is so complicated (time wise as well as two voices) that she nearly lost control at times, but I enjoy very much the way she keeps all the time lines going, and mostly enables the reader to keep up. So now I have read #9 #1 and #8 and I've ordered #7 'The Game' to read next.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the characters, and the setting. Some of the narrative choices were infuriating, particularly how King would switch narrators, each time repeating half the story of the previous one, just from a different perspective. One step back, two steps forward. It is also not exactly a mystery, since everything is simply resolved as a rabbit out of a hat by a convenient letter. (Not only is the letter unconvincing—it reads exactly how King writes the rest of the story—but the resolution it gives is ridiculous.)> "So what you're saying is, 'It's my look-out, shut up and listen'?" "Mr Hammett, you have a way with the American vernacular that bodes well for your future as a writer of popular fiction."
    • 5/5
      Ms. King weaves a stunning world in which Holmes is not a narcissist in the least, while somehow remaining true to the erstwhile detective many of us have come to love.
    • 5/5
      I love this book, I've read it more than once, twice, maybe even more than thrice. The author does a fantastic job of not only giving us a twisty plot, but also developing the characters even more so, beyond the previous installments of the series. I don't think there is anything I can fault in this one.
    • 5/5
      I love the Mary Russell series and King is a fine writer. I think this is my favorite installation to date.
    • 4/5
      Mary Russell has faced an conquered the nightmare recurrence of her family's death and learned to cope with the guilt she feels; believing that her immature argument with her brother had distracted her father and caused the accident. But traveling to San Francisco brings new disturbing dreams and the emotions surrounding her return to her childhood home and the discovery that the woman doctor who had treated her after the accident was murdered only months after her own departure for England. Her family's two Chinese servants had also been murdered, and someone takes a shot at Mary outside the Pacific Heights mansion. Holmes sees that Mary is too emotionally involved to investigate, yet resents his attempts. While following Mary, he meets Dashiell Hammett, a tubercular ex-Pinkerton and recruits him. Eventually the mystery is solved, and Mary's conscience is cleared. The description of San Francisco in full recovery from the 1906 quake is contrasted with descriptions of the destruction and chaos of the quake and fire.
    • 4/5
      While I liked learning a bit of Mary's backstory, this one didn't grab me as much as the rest of the series. It just felt too long, like the buildup was 95% of the book and then all of the action occurred in the last 5%.
    • 5/5
      Excellent installment in the Mary Russell series. I read it years ago and remembered it a little but it was still terrific. I pciked it up to read again because of how it fits with Mary Russell's war.
    • 5/5
      This is absolutely my most favorite series ever! Every book in the series is fantastic-5 star! If you like Sherlock Holmes, you have to read this pastiche. King's is the best one I've read yet.
    • 5/5
      ***I purchased a copy of this book for my own enjoyment, with no expectations of a review***‘Dreams are the answers to questions we’ve not yet learned to ask.’ ~Agt. Fox Mulder, X-FilesLocked Roomss takes Russell and Holmes to the West Coast of the US, to the City by the Bay. I live very close to San Francisco, and loved recognising places like the Cliff House and Sutro Baths. The last is just a ruin now, but for Sherlock and Mary, it would have been a thriving, vibrant place. They visited many other familiar places that I would have loved to have seen a hundred years gone. To get to her lakehouse, on the route she took, Mary would have passed right by where I now live.This was an interesting read, comprised of two alternating, but parallel narratives, one focusing on Mary, and the other on Holmes. Each is very distinctive. Mary’s is her typical first person view, but Holmes’ is in third person. The reasoning for this is explained in preface, and I found it worked quite well. I loved a chance to see Sherlock's behind the scenes thoughts. Mary has returned to San Francisco, her childhood home, to settle the family estate. En route, she begins having a series of dreams turned nightmares that take a serious toll on her health. Two of the dreams turn out to be a subconscious reminder of a buried childhood trauma. She was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. I can't imagine how terrifying the quake and subsequent fire would have been in person, but it was certainly brought to life for me here. The last dream concerns a decades old mystery that sets Sherlock to investigating. I love that, during the course of his investigating, he meets Dashiell Hammett, and recruits him as an Irregular. Priceless. As Mary begins to slowly decipher her dream on her own, Sherlock works other aspects out with his usual dogged determination. What is revealed is a heinous act, committed during the earthquake aftermath, followed years later by a terrible betrayal.Locked Rooms is not the typical Russell and Holmes tale. It is a far more personal tale, spanning nearly twenty years. It is a tale of tragedy, of loss, of nature’s fury, and of the subtle genius and intricacies of the human mind.
    • 5/5
      The plot is far from being "thin." Locked Rooms is a real page-turner and it is fascinating to delve into Mary Russell's hidden past, watching her puzzle out the mystery of its blank pages piece by piece, reeling from delayed shock and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as she slowly unlocks the rooms of her childhood and becomes whole. Perhaps the story draws me more strongly as a PTSD sufferer myself, but I found it richly textured and irresistable. It was quite a treat to read a more "psychological" mystery. King also finds an unusual way to solve the mystery-within-the-mystery at the end. All in all, an immensely satisfying read.
    • 4/5
      Another great installment; maybe not quite to the level of some of the others, but entirely respectable nonetheless. Dashiell Hammett as walk-on character was fun, too. It's still a little strange to have Holmes so far out of his London element, though, and to have Mycroft and Watson so far offstage.
    • 4/5
      After their Indian adventures, Russell and Holmes continue on eastward toward California. During the voyage Russell is wracked by three odd and disquieting dreams, the unraveling of which in San Francisco leads her to a rediscovery of suppressed childhood memories and an unexpected discovery regarding her parents' death.Despite (or perhaps because of) the strange construction of the story, alternating between Russell's first person narration and a third person account of Holmes' parallel activities, I enjoyed the book very much, and am looking forward to the newest addition to the series (Dreaming Spies) which fills in a skipped episode briefly referred to in Russell's journey from India to California.
    • 5/5
      I can't get enough of this series! I am kicking myself now that I held off on reading them because I didn't like Sherlock Holmes (after being forced to read "Hound of the Baskervilles" in grade nine).

      In this book, King changes things up again and writes in third person for the first time in this series. At first I wasn't sure but I decided that I liked it - I have no idea how close Holmes' thoughts were to the original character by Doyle, but it sounded good to me! Great story, nice incorporation of storylines from other books without making you feel like you need to reread them to catch details, and a wonderful conclusion. I hope this isn't the last of the Russell books - I must admit that I keep hoping at the end to find Russell pregnant - what would Sherlock Holmes do with a child of his own?
    • 3/5
      This is the 8th novel in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series of suspense, and the only one so far that I found creepy. It may have been my state of mind when I was reading it, but I look back on this book with an unsettled feeling.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars.

      Better than the last one (with the bizarre look at colonial British India). Bringing Dash Hammett into the 'verse is a little too cute, and yet at the same time I'm very fond of him as a character. It'd be nice to see him join them for a different sort of adventure.

      Disability tag: the bad guy has severely disfiguring burn scars gained during looting in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake. A minor character has disabilities from a fall that broke many bones. Hammett has TB.
    • 5/5
      I greatly enjoyed this, and decided to give this full marks. The series is basically Sherlock Holmes fanfic, with the great detective given a female romantic and professional partner. So many ways it could have gone wrong, but I never have felt King's creation Mary Russell was a Mary Sue--for all her capabilities she has had her vulnerabilities, and I think this installment is among the most personal and introspective of the books, and I loved that aspect. One thing I've enjoyed about the books so far, and this is the eighth of them, is that King keeps changing things up so they're fresh. Even the narrative technique is different in this one, consisting not only of Russell's first person narrative, but third person from other perspectives. And, as usual--and it's infectious--you can tell King has a blast with these, this one perhaps more than usual. The Moor has the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles for its basis. The Game was set in India under the British Raj and was a homage to Kipling's Kim. This one takes place in 1924 San Francisco. King is a California native and resident and she even slips an ancestor who survived the famous 1906 quake into the narrative as a character. She writes San Francisco with evident affection, and even included Dashiell Hammett, the one time Pinkerton Agent and mystery writer, as a character. There's even a playful reference to Conan Doyle, Holmes' creator... er, I mean biographer. This novel isn't quite the favorite some of the other Russell novels have been--The Beekeeper's Apprentice, A Letter of Mary and Justice Hall--but boy was this a pleasure. It was a treat in particular to get more of Holmes from his own perspective.
    • 4/5
      This is my favorite of Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes stories. We find out so much about Mary Russell's past, and what a surprise it is.
    • 5/5
      Another in the Mary Russel/ Sherlock Holmes mystery series.
      I wasn’t that enamored with the last one, but this one was
      fantastic. First, it is set in San Francisco and I always
      enjoy reading about The City in books. Second, the book
      delves into Mary Russell’s past and resolves some issues
      that make her character less prickly. In most of these
      books, Holmes comes across as not really caring about
      his wife and this book starts out that way as well, but the
      reader finds, as the book continues, how he really feels
      about her. The earthquake and fire are mentioned, as are
      various figures in San Francisco history, which all come
      together to make a good story. This is definitely a book I
      would read again.
    • 4/5
      I always enjoy the Mary Russell books. This had a good mystery and it was actually nice to see Mary as a bit more human and less perfect. I also liked seeing the POV of Holmes, revealing his affection for her.
    • 4/5
      Such an interesting installment in the series. I think this is my favorite since the first two books.

      To my slight disappointment, this did not actually turn out to be a locked-room mystery (a crime was committed in a room in which all the doors locked from the inside! - a trope I find particularly delicious) but was fully worthwhile regardless.

      There are several departures in this book from the style of previous Mary Russell stories. This one is told both from Mary's first-person perspective and then from a third-omniscient perspective based around Holmes' actions when Mary is not present. The preface from the "editor" explains that the third-person passages were probably also written by Mary, according to her suppositions of what happened. That particular conceit (that King is the Editor and Mary the Author) always kind of annoys me, and this no less, but I did like to see some of Holmes' perspective. It's always been slightly bothersome, in previous novels, that to find out what he's been up to, we've had to listen to him sit and recount his actions to Mary, rather than go with him as he performed him. So I applaud King for this new technique, and hope we see more of it in future installments.

      The second thing that was different in this tale was Mary's condition - weak and lost and rather incompetent in the face of her own personal horrors. It was rather sad to see her so off her game, but I suppose that made her recovery the more welcome when it came. I like, however, that she isn't infallible.

      I also really enjoyed the connection to the San Francisco events of 1906. The earthquake and fires are events I've long been fascinated by, and the perspectives provided in this tale felt well-researched and authentic. The emotional devastation of an event like that cannot be captured by news reports or broad, sweeping stories, but to see it in individual lives of people it touches gives much better perspective.

      The mystery itself was okay. I like slow-reveals and found this one to be satisfying. The idea that our heroine's past is more tragic than we already knew - that there was reason behind what was previously a senseless event in her past - is a bit cliched, and so very novel-esque, but even that brings its own satisfaction. The reasons for the murders are clear, though I'm not perfectly sure why Rosa needed to be there as a second criminal. Was Robert insufficient to act on his own? Her motivations for helping him are the murkiest bit of the tale.

      So. A delightful read.
    • 4/5
      I don't recall past Russell novels providing such an intimate glimpse of Holmes point of view, and while it was frustrating experiencing a tiny bit of Russell's distress, King balances this beautifully with Holmes' methodical yet concerned perspective. It's a delicate business imaging the rigidly controlled Holmes as a husband or lover, and King strikes the right note in LOCKED ROOMS by discussing the supportive aspects of their relationship. This book explores an aspect of American history that was unfamiliar, and painted such a portrait of Russell's family that I was pained that no resolution could deliver what I deeply wanted... for them all to be alive and well again.

      Full review at Read Fragment.
    • 4/5

      This episode in the Mary Russell series finds Russell and Holmes in San Francisco, where Russell is to attend to business related to her parents' estate. As Russell gets closer to San Francisco, she becomes increasingly disturbed by nightmares which appear to be linked to childhood events. Once the pair arrive, they naturally become embroiled in a mystery, which is resolved with the assistance of a band of Irregulars, including young crime fiction writer and former Pinkerton's detective, Dashiell Hammett.

      There's lots to love about the series in general and this book in particular. King writes very fine prose which is a joy to read and her evocation of place and time is superb. In this novel, San Francisco in the mid-1920s and at the time of the 1906 earthquake comes vividly alive. I particularly enjoyed the setting, having visited San Francisco earlier this year. In addition, she continues to develop her central characters. In this episode, Russell shows great vulnerability, which is an interesting change, and plot developments mean that part of the narrative is from Holmes' perspective, which is an added bonus. I really like the way King makes Holmes her own creation by distancing him from Conan Doyle's Holmes within the text, while having him retain enough of the original Holmes' characteristics to be recognisable. Also, Dashiell Hammett is worked into the plot in an interesting an inventive way. References to "the thin man" to describe the tubercular Hammett made me smile.

      There are some less satisfying elements of the novel. The plot is coincidence layered with implausibility. There is, for example, no convincing reason why the culprit, who killed so many people to cover his tracks, would not have done in Russell much earlier in the piece. Also, the resolution is not exactly very exciting. Moreover, King hovers on the edge of having her characters display attitudes which appear anachronistic for the period in which the novel is set.

      In the hands of a less skilled writer, this could be fairly ordinary crime fiction. However, I don't read crime fiction for verisimilitude and I don't read this series for the plot. As long as King delivers interesting characters and a great setting in her elegant prose, I'm there. Once again, I regret that it took me so long to decide to read this series. On the other hand, it's great to still have a few more to read before I get to the stage of hanging out for the next instalment.
    • 2/5
      I was disappointed in this one, which seems to be a trend with this series. I keep looking for the Mary Russell that was in earlier books. This older Mary is not the strong, interesting woman, who doesn't get led around blindly. Instead, she flounders. The book was interesting and moved briskly along, but there was something lacking.
    • 5/5
      Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, have finished their stay in India and are traveling to San Francisco so that Russell can visit her inherited holdings there. On the way, Russell begins to have recurring nightmares which Holmes believes have something to do with her childhood in San Francisco and the accident that killed her parents and brother when she was 14. Holmes soon finds Russell unreliable and Russell finds that everything is not as she remembered.This book is the 8th in the Mary Russell series by Laurie R King. I have enjoyed each of the books as I have read them, and each one seems better than the last. This particular book, I just could not put down. It was exciting and suspenseful every step of the way, and the way that the relationship between Russell and Holmes is portrayed is wonderful.King does such a good job of describing and letting us get to know the characters. I now feel as though Russell and Holmes are old friends. This book is unique in the Russell/Holmes series as part is written in first person from Russell's point of view and part is written in third person centering upon Holmes. Interestingly, when reading the last book, I had thought that I would like to get more from Holmes perspective, and I was pleased to see it had happened.I really enjoy King's writing style. It flows and makes me feel as though I am really there with the characters. It is easy to read, and the dialogue rings true. In my opinion there is certainly nothing wrong with this book. I highly recommend this book, however, I would not read it as the first in the series as it will not mean as much without reading at least the first book first.