Tapestry with loose threads

Linda raised her head and put on a smile. "A school is a tapestry of threads," she began.

Laurie R. King, Lockdown

Not only is a school "a tapestry of threads," but so is Laurie R. King's latest novel, Lockdown. Many different, seemingly independent and unrelated threads eventually come together to reveal a complete pattern or picture. Anyway that's the metaphor King plays with, and it works more or less.

Linda McDonald is the principal of Guadalupe Middle School, whose plans for a Career Day are coming to fruition. (Do middle schools really have career days?) In a series of mostly short chapters, mostly focused on a single character's thoughts and actions, King shows us the threads. An unbelievable (and I do mean unbelievable) number of these characters have troubled, even violent, pasts and could be the cause of the trouble we know is in store for this school on Career Day. Exactly who it is and what they will do is the picture the author withholds until this tapestry nears completion.

The school itself has a troubled and violent past. One student has been murdered, another is missing. Unfortunately King, best known for her popular Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mystery series, does not weave all these many threads into her completed tapestry. But the novel certainly is suspenseful.