Lockdown

A Novel of Suspense

By: Laurie R. King

Narrated by: Pilar Witherspoon

Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Using a premise pulled from the headlines - the very real vulnerability of students and teachers - the best-selling author of the Mary Russell mysteries delivers a contemporary novel of psychological suspense. The various presenters at a local school career day prepare for a day in class, not knowing that someone with a thirst for revenge is in their midst.

©2016 Laurie R. King (P)2017 Recorded Books

complex and captivating

Ms. Witherspoon does a fantastic job with dialects and pacing. download it now, trust me!

Excellent

I loved this book. It is tight, fast, different. The beginning seemed slow so be prepared to dawdle. Its reader is better than I've heard for while. It is just excellent.

Masterfully Written

This is a stand-alone book by Laurie R. King. The story is about students, a school principal and her husband, the school police officer and janitor and what leads up to the school shooting and school lockdown. I thought it was great to have San Francisco police detective Martinelli play a brief part in the story. I am a fan of King’s Martinelli series.

The book is well written. The chapters are short and succinct. The tension builds as secrets about various characters are gradually revealed. Each chapter is narrated in a different voice. King has the reader trying to determine who is going to be the shooter. The plot is well crafted and the characters are engaging. Gradually the plot leads the reader to believe one student is going to be the perpetrator, but then suddenly in seconds everything changes. The ending was a big surprise. This is a great psychological suspense story by a master storyteller.

The book was almost eleven hours long. Pilar Witherspoon does an excellent job narrating the story. The way she pronounces the Spanish names, I think she might be a native Spanish speaker. Witherspoon is an actress and audiobook narrator.

Amazing writing and characterizations

This is not a book I would generally even consider, but it was free ... I am so glad I did. While I still had some questions after the ending, I was satisfied. I cared about the characters, I was shocked by the ending, and the tension made me listen in one sitting. I will definitely look for more by this author.

Phenomenal

if you're a parent, teen, child, person with a heart... school shootings give you the biggest feels of your life. yes, the book was long. yes, the payoff was great. but let me tell you - she got into the minds of the children and even though the whole book wasn't in the school amid bullets, the reader is given stories of lives, and the lives matter! that's something we don't follow through on afterwards. the shooter is front stage.

but they're not who is important. I'm married to a police officer who trains multi faceted active shooter scenarios with schools, churches, police, fire, emt, any/everyone. it is important to know what you should and shouldn't do. I was literally crying for at least the last 40 minutes of this book, and naturally there was a twist you wouldn't expect.

this is also a reminder that we all have different lives and we don't know what happens behind others doors. take care, love freely, and not all that seem bad are bad. then again, not all that are good are good.

meh

it took quite a while to get into the book, and the narrator was not helping at all. In the end, a strange book, but oddly enough, to without an original plot or premise. Skip if you can

Loved it!

I was a bit disappointed with the last LRK book that I listened (bc of topic) to but this was a great listen.

“One of the best!”

“Better than all the rest….” The words / song lyrics that came to mind when I finished reading the last page of this book. EXTRAORDINARY!

I don’t recommend

Not as interesting as any of her other books, and the narrator was off the natural rhythm, which also detracted from the story.

Too long to the payoff

This is a good writer but I found it extremely annoying that she goes so deeply into character development, some of which does not further the plot. For 11 hours of listening, the "suspense", which was good, didn't begin until the last couple hours.