Remember when "active shooter'' wasn't part of our everyday vocabulary? I didn't think I was up for Laurie R. King's new standalone Lockdown (Bantam, digital galley), no matter how timely, having seen way too much of the real thing on the evening news. But King delivers more than a tick-tock countdown of Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School, which begins with the high hopes principal Linda McDonald has for her diverse student body. The school bubbles with "hormones and suppressed rage, with threats all around it,'' and is currently troubled by a murder trial involving student gang members and the mysterious disappearance of a seventh-grade girl. Readers are aware of a more ominous hazard headed toward the school -- a heavily armed white van -- but not who is driving. As the minutes go by, King switches among many perspectives -- various students and teachers, the principal, her husband, the school janitor, a cop on duty at the school, parents preparing to participate in career day -- and a number of backstories emerge. Perhaps there are too many, given that several could have made books on their own. Still, by the time the action really begins, readers are invested in a handful of sympathetic characters who may not survive lockdown.
from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

I've know Laurie King from her well-written Mary Russell series. "Lockdown", a stand alone novel, is a masterfully written work. It's hard to pigeonhole it into a particular genre since it can be read on many levels. It's a tapestry of stories which the reader realizes will come together at some point. The chapters move among the characters creating a web of character studies as well as moving the plot forward toward an end that may or may not be what you think it will be. Highly recommended!

This one kind of reminded me of American Crime.. How it flashed to other characters. At first there were too many to keep track with but I felt it was well done. Thank you Netgalley for approving me for the advanced copy.

I am a huge Laurie R. King fan. The Mary Russell novels are my favorite but I’ve read almost all of her other books as well. I enjoyed the brief crossover with the Kate Martinelli series in this novel. It was definitely hard to put down during the hours between my commute into work and my commute home (also known as “time when I have to work.”) I’m not usually a big fan of ensemble novels and this one felt like the ensemble was a perhaps a little bit too big and a few things did not get resolved at the end—there was at least one subplot that I wish had been its own book-- I wanted to know more about the missing girl and her friends. Overall, though, this was a really engrossing read.

I think I was expected more from this book, I was expecting a heart pounding thrill ride of emotions. Instead I got a disjointed book that seemed to drag and made me lose focus many times. I think it had to do with the ever rotating POV chapters that lasted sometimes only a few pages. This made it very hard to keep everyone straight and figure out how they all connected.

Also a major arc happened at about 20% only to be dropped and not to reconvene until about 81%. The bouncing back and forth from past and present really made it even more confusing. I like the story of Gordon and Linda (the principal) and how they met, though I would have liked more of their story. The violence that the Middle School faces and the children that go there are heartbreaking and all too common these days.

Bantam and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Lockdown. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Lockdown is a disjointed story, told from multiple perspectives, with so many side plots that the main timeline gets lost. It is apparent, from the beginning, that Guadalupe Middle School will be the epicenter of violent activity during Career Day. By the ending of the book, the main premise gets splintered into so many pieces that I no longer cared about the perpetrator or the outcome. Not to mention, but the number of people who were involved in some sort of criminal activity in their lifetime outnumbered the straight and narrow followers.

I found Lockdown to be both unbelievable and convoluted, a combination that was not very successful, in my opinion. Had the author focused on the minutes before the crime, using multiple perspectives to help place the focus on that sole issue, the story would have had a larger impact. Lockdown was a missed opportunity on the author's part and I would not recommend it to other readers.

Thanks to the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I almost gave up on this book. I was confused as to who characters were and how they were connected. That eventually was made clear. But it took 75%-80% of the way through to get there! I did grow to like some of the characters but the multiple points of view were distracting. Ending was sarisfactory. 3 out of 5 stars for me.

Thank you to NetGalley - I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book was just so-so for me. While the main event described hits close to home in today's day and age (and plays on all parents' fears), I found the actual "lockdown" part of the story quite anticlimatic. This story is told from multiple characters' points of view and I found it choppy and sometimes hard to follow - did not feel like one arc of the story. I also found it slow to get through and felt like it took way too long to get to the meat of the story and the lockdown. There was also some unusual almost paranormal tidbits thrown in that seemed to come out of right field. Not the worst book, but definitely not one of my favorites.

**This book was reviewed for Random House/Ballintine via Netgalley

Master storyweaver Laurie R King has done it again. Lockdown may be a novel of suspense, but more than that it is a novel of humanity in all our myriad glory and debasements. It is a novel of disconnect, where communications break down. And a novel of connection, with the various threads converging into the incident at Guadalupe on Career Day. If but one thread had been cut short, or played out longer, or skewed a different direction, events may have played out very differently indeed. We are all stories- little stories, blending to make larger stories, building to glorious life epics with colossal casts.

Lockdown is a vibrant mosaic of psychological suspense that will lure you in, snaring the mind and drawing the reader deep within. It is the weaving of a school on the verge of a life-shattering event, the second in only a scant handful of months. Things begin in a mundane enough manner. It is Career Day, a source of pride and stress for Linda, the principal who took over a neglected school rife with violence. On the surface, things have improved, rough as it has been. Beneath the surface though, on the flip side of that mosaic, that tapestry, one can see the abraded roughness, the snarled and tangled criss-crossing threads.

There is a shy imaginative boy, recovering from the unsolved disappearance of his best friend only months before. There is the Englishman, a former merc with a clouded past, and his wife the school principal, whose baby Guadalupe is. There is a boy thrust too early into adulthood and sacrifice, as he takes care of his younger siblings while his mother works for a meagre wage. There's a young witness to a horrific murder, with people seeking to silence him, and his two friends, one the sister to the murdered girl. There's a boy crying out silently for help, pushed to his breaking-point. There's a man with a superiority complex and sense of entitlement the size of South Dakota, and an elderly man with tragedy lingering behind him.. Each thread, each tile, taken alone, is fascinating in its own right, but brought together they create a beautifully terrifying picture of the confluence of events that will change everyone, reader included.

Once started, I read this book in almost one sitting. Ms King has woven a rich, intricate story with beautiful language and a deep, abiding lesson- we are all connected. This was my first experience with Ms King’s work outside of Mary Russell’s memoirs, which are just lovely.

📚📚📚📚📚 Highly recommended

It’s Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School and Principal Linda McDonald needs the day to go smoothly. The school suffers from all the issues associated with poverty and immigration. The community is still reeling from both the murder of a teenager by a gang member and the mysterious disappearance of a sixth-grader. Career Day is a chance to bring the students together and show them all the great things that their future could hold. But for some, the future seems too daunting and there's no hope in sight. As the minutes tick by, the people inside Guadalupe Middle School march closer to disaster.

Guadalupe Middle School is located in the farm community of San Felipe, California. It's a "school bubbling with hormones and suppressed rage, with threats all around it” attended by "seven hundred–plus adolescents on the brink of boiling over, into impatience, mockery, even the violence that was never far away.” All middle schools have their problems, but this one suffers from “indifferent staff, poor choices, and school board neglect." The school has made great strides since Linda McDonald became principal, but maintaining stability always seems to be an uphill battle. There's a little bit of everything in this book: guarded secrets, gangs, murder trials, corporate intrigue, missionaries, international terrorism, vengeful mercenaries, a missing kid, alcoholic fathers, accusations of pedophilia and domestic abuse...and even a ghost story! The entire book covers the minutes between 12:13 AM to 1:25 PM. The climatic event doesn't begin until the last 15% of the story. The main action didn't affect me emotionally, but I loved the urgent build-up to it. The omniscient narrator chapters reminded me of some of my favorite parts of The Martian!

The chapters of Lockdown alternate between a diverse set of characters: a principal, a school volunteer, a janitor, a coach, a school psychologist, a cop, five students, and one guest speaker. The problem with such a large cast of characters is that the detailed back stories felt like both too much and not enough. Many of the characters could’ve carried an entire book by themselves. Several of them ended up in San Felipe after escaping violence in their home countries. I’d love to read more about the school janitor who ended up in California after losing everything and Mina’s mother's escape from Iran in the 1970s. A series with Officer Olivia Mendez would be pretty awesome too!

The common thread between the students is that they are allstruggling with their identities. They don't like what they see in the mirror and the adults in their lives pressure them to be something other than what they want to be. They are stuck in the awkward transitional phase between child and adult. As much as they keep secrets and wall themselves off from the adults that care about them, they still seem to be aching for someone to reach out to them and break through their defenses. The faculty of Guadalupe Middle School are trying to figure out how to get through to these kids, many who don’t have the best of home lives. It's a tough position to be in, because there's a thin line between gaining a kid's trust and pushing them further away.

The theme of Career Day is “Unexpected Threads” and the goal is to show how everything ties together. Principal McDonald says in her speech that "a school is a tapestry of threads." Her husband muses that the roughest threads can be beautiful and the most delicate of threads can become a noose. Officer Mendez wonders if a sweater is a more apt metaphor, because it can all fall apart with the slight pull of a loose thread. In the end, Principal McDonald realizes the school is more like a mosaic than a deliberately woven tapestry. As all these disparate characters from diverse backgrounds are brought together, they set each other on new and unexpected paths: "Everyone’s histories wove together to create a thing of beauty. Or ugliness, sometimes."

I rounded up my rating because I enjoyed Laurie King’s writing and her ability to create compelling stories for her characters. I would be interested in reading more of her books. It's just that by the end of Lockdown, I didn't feel much payoff for getting so invested in several of the characters' lives. One character was noticeably one-dimensional next to the more well-developed characters and that person dampened some of the emotional power for me.

If you liked this book, you might enjoy The Light Fantastic by Sarah Combs (school shooting/threads/a ton of characters). If the ghost story interested you, I recommend reading the short story "Adela's House" in Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez.

3 1/2 Stars

In the end, I actually liked this book. Unfortunately, it took a long and windy road to get there. The many characters and their backstories really didn't add much to the book and some were totally unnecessary. The chapters did not flow together well and because it took so long to get to the meat of the story, it lacked suspense. The Lockdown sequence itself (when we got to it) seemed a bit unbelievable, with all that fire power, there was very little bloodshed (which didn't hurt my feelings at all). The ending was done well and wrapped almost everything up.

Another great offering by King! Totally didn't see the twist at the end. A little slow to start, but once I was about 80 pages in, I couldn't put it down.

Thanks Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and netgalley for this ARC.

Laurie R. King has my attention no matter the genre. I was on board the whole of the novel. You can't help feeling invested and anxious because it feels like it can happen anywhere and to anybody. I wonder if they'll make a movie based of the book one day?

Well. Wow. This was edge of my seat can't put down reading. A long time fan of King's Mary Russell books, this was my first foray into her standalone fiction. Damn, well worth it. The cast of characters is well drawn and the pacing intricate and perfectly deployed. I felt like the characters came away with me and I didn't want it to end, despite the dramatic arch.

Lockdown - from the title and cover art I expected a suspenseful novel of a shooting, or possible shooting. What I didn't expect was this thoughtful tale of a community coming together, and the many intimate character studies between these pages. This tale has many layers and Ms. King masterfully lets the story unfold right to the last page. Well written and extremely entertaining!

Highly recommend for those who love mystery and suspenseful thrillers. Readers of King's previous novels will not be disappointed.

I'll be purchasing copies of this novel for family, friends, and my own library!

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this novel and to share my thoughts.

Laurie R. King is the author of the long-running mystery series featuring Sherlock Holmes and his apprentice, Mary Russell. Here, in this standalone suspense novel, King takes on the story of one life-changing day at the troubled Guadalupe Middle School in San Felipe, CA.

"A school had always been a place to incubate hopes and dreams." Principal Linda McDonald has decided to hold a Career Day, where successful adults of the community can come to share details about their jobs with the students. It should be a day of inspiration but as the minutes of that day tick by, there is a growing sense of menace. Are there dark secrets and forces outside of Linda's control that might tear her hard work at the school apart and threaten the very lives of her students?

The plot is quite intricate, shifting between multiple points of view, and I have to admit that I didn't care for that at first. I found it confusing and disliked having to refer back to a list of characters until they became more familiar. But by the 30% mark, I was hooked and couldn't put the book down. The backstories of a few of the major characters were very interesting and added a lot to the book as a whole.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read an arc of this book.

Perhaps if I weren't a long-time fan and devotee of Laurie King's Mary Russell novels, this would have been a good read. It's a total departure and it has a tense, noir feel which unfortunately did not equate to "can't put it down." I ended up stopping after the first chapter. There were too many characters to keep up with, and with a "cast of characters" in the beginning, I should have known that would be an issue.

I'm a longtime fan of Laurie King's Mary Russell series, so when I saw she was releasing something new and different in the thriller genre, I had to check it out. This is nothing like her other writing. The plot is current and relatable, with a unique structure. You'll want to read it in one sitting, it's so good!

The story is told by several alternating narrarators over the course of one day. It takes place at a middle school, where you know someone is going to create a very dangerous situation at some point but you don't know who. Several of the characters seem untrustworthy and unstable so the tension builds slowly as they reveal parts of their background. I am not easily fooled, but this writing strategy really kept me guessing.

I would have liked to have gotten some resolution to the various back stories. Some stories were so interesting that I was certain she'd close the loop - but the end came and went with no closure. That was my only gripe. Otherwise, it was a satisfying quick read!

LOCKDOWN

With its ominous title, this book intrigued me but I felt a touch of dread that the violence the title portends would be fulfilled. But of course this is a Laurie R. King novel so that is only part of the story.
When one of the central characters, Linda McDonald is introduced I was hooked. She arrives as a missionary in the highlands of New Guinea and wends her way back to the States to the rural community of San Felipe, as the principal of the Guadalupe Middle School.
The story is skillfully woven together through student's lives, their families, interactions with Linda, her mysterious husband, school personnel and Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School. We see events of Career Day through the filters of multiple characters' perspectives as events come together in the suspenseful culmination of the title event, Lockdown. Happily their stories don't quite end there, with snippets of lives continuing and the wisp of anticipation of possibly another novel with this group off characters.
It is a story about tragedy but additionally about coming of age, friendships, families, and trust.

I was fortunate to be able to read a copy of this book through NetGalley.

Although King is best known for her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries, it is her stand-alone thrillers that have really appealed to me. I think her Folly is one of the best of its genre. However, if Lockdown hadn’t been written by Laurie R. King, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to read it. The subject, a violent incident at a middle school, wouldn’t normally appeal to me.

The staff and students of Guadalupe school are preparing for Career Day. They have had a tough year in which one student’s sister was murdered by a gang banger, another student is a witness against him, and another student, a young girl named Bee, disappeared without a trace.

Linda McDonald, the school principal, is most concerned about whether the day will come off. She is hoping to inspire some of her mostly impoverished students with career ambitions, and hope for the future.

Gordon Kendrick, Linda’s husband, has a past that may be coming back to haunt him after he is mentioned in the publicity for Career Day. Another adult who is hoping to stay under the radar is Tio, the school janitor.

Several of the students are clearly troubled. But 8th grader Brendan Atchison, the son of a successful entrepreneur, is plotting something drastic that involves another person.

Although the novel employs a technique that I recently found irritating in Salt to the Sea, the rapid shifting of point of view between short sections, it works much better in Lockdown, building true suspense. At first, I was more interested in the story of what happened when Linda met Gordon in New Zealand than in the plot about the school, but I finally decided that this is another fine suspense novel by Laurie R. King.