Sunday, June 11, 2017

King, Laurie R. (The Art of Detection)

This one tickled my fancy more than others she's written. What King did here was put ALL her feelings about the LGBT community into one smartly delivered package (although it's certainly true that her previous books have provided plenty of her thoughts in that area).

And, of course, she takes this opportunity to start merging her series together - in this case her Sherlock Holmes series and her lesbian detective series - by writing a short story a la Holmes inside a contemporary detective novel. At first, I was surprised that she was going to have Martinelli read the entire story, but when I had finished that part, I understood why she followed that course of action.

The short story is integral to the completion of the novel, mostly because they mirror each other but also because they contain precisely the same themes. There are all the hallmarks of the Martinelli stories - lesbian families, supportive cops and friends, descriptions of some of the best places in the San Francisco area (hello, Marin Headlands!), life-threatening situations only Kate can handle - but it is missing one common theme, which is religion. One of the things I have always liked about King stories is that they often contain theological themes. In this novel, she has supplanted that with something equally important.

The book also feels like it's wrapping up a lot of history (aka 5 novels in the same series) and I don't expect to see another one for Kate Martinelli for a long time, if ever. I think I'm okay with that, because of how she finished this one.

No comments: