Laurie R. King

New York Times Bestselling Author

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Love for Lockdown

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My friends at Deadly Pleasures Magazine have given Lockdown a lovely long review.

I hope they don’t mind, but I think I’ll post the whole thing here–and, they named it one of their Best Novels of 2017. Thank you, Deadly Pleasures!

Readers would be justified in thinking that with a title like Lockdown, the new Laurie R. King novel was going to present a thriller about a school under siege; and in a way, that is exactly what is provided – though hardly via the expected method.

It is career day at Guadalupe Middle School. It should be a day when the students examine what the future holds for them, but instead the tensions that lie just under the surface of this societal microcosm threaten to erupt.

Lockdown is a true ensemble piece. Laurie R. King puts into place a collection of characters with enough secrets, scandals, suspicion, and lies to keep readers guessing throughout the unfolding of this tragic incident. There is such diversity presented on the page – a true reflection of the melting pot that is America – and each character is vividly drawn.

King structures her novel by starting chapters with time-stamps documenting the day’s activities from multiple points of view in a steady movement forward. Readers know immediately that this a device used as a virtual countdown clock to impending trouble. Occasionally, King will recount past events that have a bearing on the current plot. Among other things, these include details of a student’s death the previous year, the principal’s time spent in Papua New Guinea, and a controversial trial that is taking place across town.

About two-thirds of the way Lockdown, King presents a series of chapters that are inspired by the opening line of the principal’s career day lecture. The leader of the school starts out by alluding to the school population as a tapestry of unique threads. This leads to each of our ensemble cast reflecting on what that phrase means in relation to themselves. It is beautifully executed and had it ended there, it would have been the highlight of the novel – but King goes even one step further. At the end of this section, the school principal modifies her metaphor in a way that takes it from stuffy and erudite to gritty and modern. The shift is not forced and seems so obvious after the fact, but when it happens, the moment is extremely powerful and marks a decided shift in the nature of the narrative. This short collection of chapters alone is a master class on unifying a narrative and the characters involved while also exposing the more global aspects of a theme.

The violent incident towards which the entirety of Lockdown is leading does not occur until very late in the novel. This reinforces the idea that the denouement, while an important part of the work as a whole, is not as important as the “why” that causes it.   Incremental actions leading to massive reactions is something we are seeing more and more of in today’s modern world and by recounting this in a small, enclosed environment, King is able to document the dangers involved in such decisions.

The brevity of the violence in Lockdown may surprise some, but it is clear from the novel’s structure that this was not King’s focus. If I have one complaint about the novel it would be that the lack of bloodshed seems unrealistic given what we have seen occur in similar real-life situations. But this is not a book about the attack; this is a novel about people, about society, and about interaction. As such, longtime fans of Laurie R. King will delight in the brief appearance of Kate Martinelli and Brother Erasmus – beloved characters from her earliest series. They are only a tiny part of Lockdown, but their arrival helps to expand the canvas of the novel, reinforcing the idea that this type of thing can happen anywhere, at any time.

Laurie R. King’s Lockdown is a timely novel, meticulously written, and sure to have readers thinking long after the story is told. 

Kepler’s and me

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Thanks to everyone who came out to see me talk about Lockdown during the past week–although if you’re in the Bay Area, you can still come down and see me one more time, tomorrow night at Kepler’s.  Send ’em a RSVP, here.

Lockdown day 2

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I’ll be flitting up the length of the Bay Area today, dropping in at various Copperfields and Books Inc shops in Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and San Francisco for the odd ritual of scrawling my name on a lot of title pages, then at 6:00 turning up at Book Passage in the Ferry Building for an evening event talking about Lockdown.

Join me! (Details here.)

Lockdown: Guadalupe Middle School

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The Lockdown tour begins tonight, at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale. And it’s making me realize that talking about Lockdown during this tour is going to be tricky.

You can’t miss the suggestion that it’s about a school shooting—if the title doesn’t give it away, the cover art will—and yet, that’s not what it’s about. Yes, there is a school. And yes, the reader learns early on that a gun comes to school this day. But when it comes to the story, the gun is the seed, the gun is the shadow, the gun is a brief stutter in the book’s steady heartbeat.

Lockdown is about a community. It’s about children who function as adults, and about adults wrapped up in childish concerns. It’s about the wealth of the poor and the poverty of the rich. It’s about how we can help each other, and how we really haven’t a clue what drives our kids, our husbands, our best friends. It’s about unexpected strength and unseen weaknesses.

It’s about a school community, and all the worlds contained therein:

Its tiled walls had once been a mosaic. Under the years of filth, felt pens, and chewing gum lay a mural somebody had spent a lot of time on. Up at the top (beyond the reach of student arms) was a row of surprisingly ornate hand-painted tiles—a sort of picture frame, wrapped around a sky as blue as the afternoon beyond the archway.

Linda studied the brutalized surface, trying to pick out the design. The tiles themselves were a mix of tidy rectangles and anarchic shards: a long rectangle evoked the school’s façade; in the blue sky, a spatter of chips made for an Impressionistic, breeze-stirred flag; ten thin triangles shaped the circle of a wheelchair. Some of the tiles were painted, rather than pieced: a woman’s face here, obscured by felt-pen beard and horns; a cluster of high-top shoes there; a brown hand sinking a basketball.

Linda stepped closer, her attention caught by that face: a woman with an expression of authority, captured in a few deft lines. Wasn’t that the school secretary? Bemused, Linda let the Señora drive her back to the elementary school, all the while composing a refusal, polite but firm.

The job would be thankless. If Guadalupe’s new principal man- aged to get test scores up five points, the school board would demand to know why it wasn’t ten. If absenteeism and violence fell a notch, why not two? Playground bloodshed, drugs, and student pregnancy would be daily concerns. It would be terrifying and exhilarating and the mere thought of it made Linda want to take to her bed.

But that night, she had a dream of using her thumb-nail to scrape the felt-pen from that tile face. The next morning, Gordon asked why her sleep had been so restless. The next day at school, her thoughts kept going back to that mosaic. And when the final bell had rung, Linda picked up the phone and called the district office with a list of demands—a very long list.

**

Lockdown goes on sale June 13, but you can pre-order a copy from: Bookshop Santa Cruz (signed), Poisoned Pen (signed), your local Indie, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.

Lockdown: walking back the cat

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Many years ago, when I was a new writer, I needed to have the final scene clear in my mind, if not actually on paper: a goal to work toward, even if the path itself wasn’t immediately visible. But about seven books in, I somehow forgot to choose my ending before I began to write. And although I got into a panic when I realized it, the back of my mind just patted me on the hand and said it would be fine. And it was.

That’s why I knew Lockdown was a book even though it began as stories. From the outside, the creation of Lockdown looks like chaos: six short stories that for some reason their author decided to glue together into a novel.

But that’s the reverse of the process. Do you know the term “walking back the cat”? It’s an Intelligence reference to finding the cause-and-effect pattern in a series of apparently random events. Yes, you have a school lockdown: in this novel, you know that from the early pages. But how does it happen? What are the links, invisible but steely, that tie the alarm clock of principal Linda McDonald (see the last post) to the can of spray paint carried by one of her students…

2:45 am, Career Day

Chaco

Chaco put his head around the dark corner of A Wing, filled with . . . what was the word? Foreboding. Yeah, so the janitor made him nervous. Gave Chaco misgivings.

Scared the shit out of him.

Far as Chaco knew, Tío wasn’t nobody’s uncle, wasn’t even from Mexico like everybody Chaco knew. Sure, he talked Spanish, but his accent was, like, exotic—from somewhere else. Nicaragua, maybe? El Salvador? Tío was just the limpiador, walking up and down in his dirt-colored uniform and cleaning the floors. Big thrill for the old guy was the day he got to shut off the water in the girl’s baño, stop it running all over the floor. Real hero, man.

Maybe the reason Tío made him nervous was cause the dude was so pinche quiet. Tío talked quiet, he didn’t turn on a radio the minute the bell rang—even his cart with all the mops and brooms, the same one the last janitor used, didn’t rattle and squeak so much. And, like, the other day when one of the substitutes shouted some question down the breezeway at him? Tío didn’t just shout back an answer. Instead, he put away his broom and walked over, all polite, to see what the guy wanted.

Funny thing was, the teacher looked a little . . . Not embarrassed. More like he thought maybe Tío coming at him so quiet (like Angel) meant the old guy had a knife. Edgy, maybe? Wanting to edge away?

Anyway, yeah, Chaco felt a little edgy tonight himself, crouching in back of A Wing, away from the all-night floods, a can of spray paint in his hand. He really, really didn’t want to turn around and find Tío there, looking at him.

Which was stupid. Or—what was that word he’d found the other day?—ludicrous. (Chaco had a private collection of perfect words—words he’d never, ever use out loud.) Tío didn’t spend the night at school, and no way could he just guess who’d done a tag. Chaco knew all about crime labs and forensic science and stuff, so he was wearing a set of his uncle’s overalls he’d fished out of the trash, and his most beat-up pair of shoes, and he’d dump it all on his way home. He’d take a shower in the morning so he wouldn’t smell like paint. How would Tío know?

Besides, there wasn’t really much choice. He was almost thirteen—and, he was family to Taco Alvarez.

So now, at near to three in the morning, Chaco the Tagger crept down the A Wing breezeway, the old rubber on his shoes making a kissing sound against the smooth concrete. Nothing moved, no cars went by. Under the main breezeway, into the entrance arch— and there it was, all shiny and new-looking, hundreds of little chips and tiles with pictures of school things and people on them. He hesitated, just a little, ’cause really, it was kind of dope. Intricate, like. And a man didn’t tag someone else’s art unless it was enemy action. But this was a school, and in the end he had to prove himself to Taco (and Angel) and yeah, to Sofia Rivas. Though she’d probably just give him one of her looks, all arrogant, or maybe condescending.

Chaco’s arm went up to shake the can, making the little ball inside ting back and forth five, six times. He chose his spot with care, right there on the face of the school secretary for his first letter, and—

And as if the pressure of his finger had triggered a lot more than paint, the universe exploded into a blinding glare of flood-light, outlining every tile, giving texture to the grout, showing the cheerful expressions on a crowd of pieced-together figures.

The can bounced and skittered across the walkway as Chaco fled into the night.

**

Lockdown goes on sale June 13, but you can pre-order a copy from: Bookshop Santa Cruz (signed), Poisoned Pen (signed), your local Indie, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.