Laurie R. King: Those Who Are Gone
Raquel Laing #2
Those Who Are Gone is the follow-up to Laurie King’s excellent 2022 novel, Back to the Garden, one of my favorite books of that year. Her new effort is definitely a different animal, as she goes back to her roots with a complex police tale reminiscent of A Grave Talent, for which she won the 1993 Edgar for best first novel.
Equal to the modern master of the genre, Michael Connelly, this is a procedural with bells on. Main character Raquel Laing is a homicide cop still cleaning up a timeline which stretches back to King’s previous book, while at the same time trying to get a grip her own troubled and murky past. She’s what we might recognize as neurodivergent, as many social cues elude her, but she’s compensated by developing the skill of reading micro expressions, allowing her to translate her interpretations into an out of the box solution to various mysteries, solutions which are quite often correct. Her glitches relating to other humans make her a challenge as a partner, and in this novel, she has a new one named Pam, who seems more interested in her Manolo Blahniks and boyfriend than her job.