| | Comment from (2004-11-26) |
| Just had to post a rave review of Laurie King's books--especially the tough-minded ones. I came across her work first with "To Play the Fool", which I found extremely impressive, literate but exploding pomposity instead of putting up with it.
Fools, it seems, are social daredevils and very edgy folks.
Anybody can read her Sherlock Holmes ones with pleasure, but there are yet some dark currents under the civilized uppercrust exterior. (Either upper cut or upper curs't might be a better phrase!) I think the undertows are most visible in "Justice Hall", which is actually a sequel to "O Jerusalem". The same time and turf as Lord Peter Whimsey, greenest Engleland at some points, and Palestine at its most sinister at others, and often darkly humorous.
I do not know if it's true, but someone told me that Ms. King was getting heavily criticized for the tough-minded ones, such as "A Grave Talent" or "With Child."
Amazon describes "A Grave Talent" thus: Casey Martinelli and Alonzo Hawkin investigate the serial murders of young children. Author’s first novel.
O boy, *that* was a first novel? I say that it has some of the best writing I have ever seen about artists, cops, lesbian commitment, and about SF-Bay Area Renaissance Faire/Creative Anachronism hippies. The community created in your mind by this book lives on afterward--I want to live in that artist's loft, and tootle a flute or wear something in velvet when I go to their lodge parties in those woods.
The dead children become just as vivid...
"With Child is not in the Kate Martinelli series, but it's equally terrifying.
These books will make the inside of your skull itch, requiring you to think about them for days; a sudden insight or the odd sensory image will return to you whether you like it or not. Not everybody is prepared for this uncomfortable sensation--but it's terrific writing. I find something new when I reread them, too.
I believe there's a newer book of hers to add to the general list, but I can't recall the name. In that book, the grandmother of Kate Martinelli's lover (cop series) is a fine-art carpenter with psychological problems. She rebuilds a burnt house put up by a family ancestor, a WW1 veteran who disappeared (murdered). While solving it, she involves a Vietnam veteran who rescues abused children (a character carried over from "With Child"). It becomes clear that this is part of a whole network of characters and overlapping lives, expanding outward in time from the first Kate Martinelli books.
Very great stuff. |
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