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Seven year ago, suspense writer Andrew Thomas fled to Alaska after killing his evil twin, who had framed Andrew for several heinous murders. Andrew has finally started writing again, this time an autobiographical work detailing what really happened. He is being followed by Horace Boone, an aspiring writer who means to catapult himself to fame on Andrew's back. Orson Thomas had an accomplice, Luther Kite. Andrew thought he had killed Luther, too. Wrong. Luther is now getting Andrew's attention in the most vivid way possible: he is kidnapping and/or killing those nearest and dearest to Andrew. It has been a bloody week in North Carolina. Of course, local law officials assume that it is Andrew, up to his old tricks. Andrew comes back to North Carolina, determined to clear his name by finding the killer. Horace follows him, "Having read Andrew Thomas's manuscript, Desert Places, he understood perfectly well what was happening: on the supposition that Andrew was telling the truth, Luther Kite had survived the desert, was now alive and wreaking havoc, and Andrew was going to find him." Violet King, a local law enforcement investigator, is just as determined to find the killer, although she spends a lot of her (mental) time fretting that she isn't worthy or up to the task. I found LOCKED DOORS to be a mixed pleasure. The pace is very slow for the first two-thirds of the book. It only develops that roller-coaster tempo when Luther, Andrew, and Violet converge. When that happens, there is no doubt that LOCKED DOORS is a thriller. The prose can be a little purple: ̉He was more vivid in her mind than he'd been in a long while. What she felt toward him wasn't sadness or nostalgia or even love. It was beyond an emotion she could name. She thought of him now as light and time and energy -- a being her earthbound could could not begin to comprehend. Did he watch her now? she wondered. From some unfathomable dimension? She had the warmest inkling they would meet again as pure souls in the space between the stars. They would communicate their essences to each other and luminously merge, becoming a single brilliant entity. Again, this is mostly in the first part of the book. Once the pace picks up, the writing gets more concise, less adjective-prone. Or I didn't notice it as much because the plot was more consuming. I found the family dynamics in the Kite family to be more than a little unusual. My first reaction was, "This couldn't really happen!" Once I decided to accept the original premise (which I can't go into without giving a major spoiler), it worked within the confines of the plot. I'd be curious to know if the Kite family was based on any kind of reality. But it's not something I'd like to know first-hand. I'm not sure I understand why Andrew left Alaska -- it would have been easy enough to prove he didn't commit the new wave of crimes in North Carolina had he stayed put, which might have raised a lot of doubts about the original murders committed by Orson. That would, of course, have made for a not very exciting book. I also didn't understand why Violet made the choice she made at the end of LOCKED DOORS; it didn't seem to be in character. But I've been wrong before! LOCKED DOORS is the second in a series. If you read this before you read DESERT PLACES, there are some obvious spoilers, but it isn't necessary to read them in order. I felt the ending of LOCKED DOORS was a little contrived, probably in order to set up the next book in the series. Bearing in mind those caveats, I found LOCKED DOORS to be slow going at first, with a kick-butt ending. The writing gets better as the book goes along. Some of the characters are on the fringes of reality, as can happen in real life. Some of the plot devices stretched the bounds of credulity. When Crouch is good, he's really good. When he's bad, he's mediocre. I'll read more, just to see if he improves.
Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, October 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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