A community comes together when threatened by someone with a thirst for revenge in this stunningly intricate, tautly plotted novel of rich psychological suspense from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell mysteries. Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School: A day given to innocent hopes and youthful dreams. A day no one in attendance will ever forget. A year ago, Principal Linda … forget.
A year ago, Principal Linda McDonald arrived at Guadalupe determined to overturn the school’s reputation for truancy, gang violence, and neglect. One of her initiatives is Career Day—bringing together children, teachers, and community presenters in a celebration of the future. But there are some in attendance who reject McDonald’s bright vision.
A principal with a secret. A husband with a murky past. A cop with too many questions. A kid under pressure to prove himself. A girl struggling to escape a mother’s history. A young basketball player with an affection for guns.
Even the school janitor has a story he dare not reveal.
But no one at the gathering anticipates the shocking turn of events that will transform a day of possibilities into an explosive confrontation.
Tense, poignant, and brilliantly paced, Laurie R. King’s novel charts compelling characters on a collision course—a chain of interactions that locks together hidden lives, troubling secrets, and the bravest impulses of the human heart.
Praise for Lockdown
“A fine thriller, as timely as it is gripping.”—Booklist (starred review)
“King delivers, providing both a drama-filled anatomy of the school and a chance for its community to show its best by the way it confronts the worst Career Day imaginable.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Lockdown [has] the tension of a ticking time bomb.”—San Jose Mercury News
“Dramatic . . . harrowing.”—Santa Cruz Sentinel
“King is a strong, purposeful writer with a keen eye for detail. . . . [This book earns] its page-turner status.”—The Stranger
“Keeps readers guessing to the very end.”—Charleston Currents
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School is a tapestry of lives, and Laurie King’s LOCKDOWN is a tapestry of people and the times and places that have made them who they are. I read this slowly, with breaks to let parts sink in, because it’s complex and intense and to be savored. The caring adults and brave students were reminders of my teaching days, and all the decisions made in the course of a day . . . and all the consequences. I’m grateful my days weren’t this dramatic . . . and it may be good that I am reading it in retirement.
A satisfying gripper by Laurie R. King. This is the kind of book that’s like those vaudeville performers who entertained by spinning plates on poles. The first problem is to get them all up there and spinning, and the second problem is to keep up their velocity and balance so that they don’t all come crashing down. King does a good job at both phases, setting up a large, complicated cast of characters, giving us their back stories, leaving enough vague to provide a bunch of red herrings, and — and this is the real achievement — making us care about each and every one. Whether it’s tough Chaco with his secret logophilia or Sergeant Mendez who knows just how to stand to inspire terror or confidence or others — she did an excellent job.
WOW. Just, wow. This was an amazing story – the pacing, the build, the Big Reveal, the resolution… It was all spot-on perfect.
To say the book is a slow build is rather an understatement. It isn’t until 83% in – yes, more than 4/5 of the story! – before the lockdown/Big Action even occurs. I kept thinking, with each new chapter, that it HAD to happen soon; it was knife-edge suspense, built so artfully and paced so perfectly, that I simultaneously dreaded and couldn’t wait for every turn of the page… But it wasn’t like I spent the book waiting – the back stories and underlying character and plot development were so intricately intermingled and so well crafted that I didn’t even realize how deep into the story I was getting, while still technically waiting for the story to actually start!
The characters are just as marvelously detailed and play out just as brilliantly as the plot development. There are so many layers to each character; no one is who they seem and the blend of expectations, assumptions, and realities is heart-breaking and uplifting and so utterly redolent of being in middle school. Everyone is human and frail and broken and reassembling themselves piece by painstaking piece, and all of that chaos is reflected in the world around them up to and through the actual event of the lockdown. It’s all simply brilliant – pitch-perfect storytelling…
Full review: http://blog.jill-elizabeth.com/2017/07/29/lockdown-by-laurie-r-king/
Laurie King is one of my all-time favorite forever authors, and Lockdown was no disappointment. Tense and complicated, the story unwraps through the voices of all the most concerned characters, back and forth in time and arranged as a sort of stream of consciousness ticking clock. I was astonished to encounter once again my old friend The Fool this many miles (and years) away from San Francisco. The plot involves a middle school in the southwest, students and faculty, and invokes terror as only kids of that age can.
All that said, Ms. King’s need for cleverness may in fact have blunted the effect of this story a little, so that I did not connect with anyone in it as well as I usually do. (Or possibly that was because I raised two teens myself and just don’t want to think about it.) For that reason only, I knocked one star off the rating. Laurie King rocks.
ANYTHING by Laurie King I read!!!