None
4 stars
Locked Rooms picks up pretty much immediately where The Game left off, as we learn that Russell and Holmes have left India--and instead of heading back to Britain, they've gone through Japan instead on their way to San Francisco to take care of some family business of Russell's. The transition between stories, I fear, is a bit shaky; we are told that this was part of their plan all along, and yet, having just read The Game immediately beforehand, I recollect exactly nothing in that book about how they'd intended to head to San Francisco.
There's also several bemusing references to their stop in Japan and hints that Interesting Things happened there. Russell at one point uses the phrase "complexity of events" to describe what happened there--and yet we never are told what actually happened, which was confusing and vaguely annoying to me as a reader. I was torn …
Locked Rooms picks up pretty much immediately where The Game left off, as we learn that Russell and Holmes have left India--and instead of heading back to Britain, they've gone through Japan instead on their way to San Francisco to take care of some family business of Russell's. The transition between stories, I fear, is a bit shaky; we are told that this was part of their plan all along, and yet, having just read The Game immediately beforehand, I recollect exactly nothing in that book about how they'd intended to head to San Francisco.
There's also several bemusing references to their stop in Japan and hints that Interesting Things happened there. Russell at one point uses the phrase "complexity of events" to describe what happened there--and yet we never are told what actually happened, which was confusing and vaguely annoying to me as a reader. I was torn between wanting to yell "um, so, WHAT HAPPENED IN JAPAN?", half-wondering if I'd somehow missed a book somewhere (though I knew I hadn't), and strongly suspecting that there will in fact be a future book about What Happened In Japan. Which struck me as, well, gimmicky.
So did the use of Dashiell Hammett as a character in this plot, for that matter. See all my comments up above about reacting to the use of Kimball O'Hara as a character; they apply here, only more so since Hammett was an actual real person. As with The Game for me, so too with Locked Rooms; I am not familiar with Hammett's work or his history, so the use of him in the plot doesn't mean much to me and pretty much came across as another excuse to have Russell and Holmes meet a Famous Person.
All that said, I enjoyed Locked Rooms a lot more than I did The Game. All the problems in the previous book with Russell being omni-competent get turned on their ear here as we learn that why yes, Russell can be thrown hugely off her stride. Seeing her trying to come to terms with her past and the deaths of her parents and brother, and even fight with Holmes when he gets too close to the sensitive bits of her repressed memories? That was interesting.
And so was seeing things from Holmes' POV for once! King jumped into Holmes' head for two long chunks of the book, and it was about damned time she'd done so as well. I mean, if she's going to have her protagonist go and marry the world's most renowed detective, it's good to actually see him do some on-camera detecting--not to mention see him reacting to the stresses that Russell's going through and to have their relationship rounded out quite a bit more.
There was some measure of "convenience" to certain aspects of the plot--the 'faceless man' of Russell's nightmares turning out to be her father's shady friend, for example--but not nearly so much as in the previous book, and the far more interesting aspects of the plot helped balance things out rather nicely. The flashbacks that helped bring to life the events of the 1906 earthquake were particularly vivid, as were the descriptions of Chinatown. And I liked how things were tied in to a seemingly random incident in the previous book--the attempt on Russell and Holmes' life with the collapsing balcony in the marketplace.
All in all, two thumbs up!
