{"id":7189,"date":"2026-08-26T07:19:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=7189"},"modified":"2026-08-26T07:19:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:19:42","slug":"laurie-r-king-those-who-are-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/laurie-r-king-those-who-are-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Laurie R. King: Those Who Are Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raquel Laing #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Those Who Are Gone<\/em> is the follow-up to Laurie King\u2019s excellent 2022 novel, Back to the Garden, <\/em>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<\/em>, for which she won the 1993 Edgar for best first novel.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s previous book,<\/em> while at the same time trying to get a grip her own troubled and murky past.\u00a0 She\u2019s what we might recognize as neurodivergent, as many social cues elude her, but she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Raquel maintains ties with Al of the cold case squad, and she has worked cold cases in the past (see Back to the Garden<\/em>) but after an injury she\u2019s returned as a homicide consultant. The book moves back and forth in time a bit, taking in the case that left Raquel injured as well as a new one that seems connected. The other mystery that needs to be resolved is the question of her parentage.\u00a0 She still lives with her adopted sister, Dee, whose parents, the Laings, took Raquel in at age 9 after her mother\u2019s and father\u2019s death and subsequent dreadful foster home experiences.<\/p>\n

Raquel\u2019s father was a drug dealer, and her memories of him, while not awful, are also tied to a variety of \u201cuncles\u201d and \u201caunts\u201d in the same business, one she hadn\u2019t understood as a child, but one that, as a cop, she now knows only too well. She was investigating the vicious murder of a lower-level drug dealer when she was shot, and the aftershocks of that case continue to reverberate throughout the story.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s nimble time hopping is not confusing, but rather serves to elucidate the narrative, both in terms of Raquel grappling with her family\u2019s past, as well as managing to tie together the various threads of the story.\u00a0 Another less expert writer could very well have produced a boring book, but in King\u2019s hands it\u2019s unputdownable, as the reader races ahead, curious about what Raquel is discovering about herself and the murder of the young drug dealer.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s mind is far reaching and over arching, examining every single aspect of the story she tells, taking in tiny details and big ones, creating books compellingly rich and layered.\u00a0 It\u2019s a high wire act, and I almost expected the skillful balancing act of this complicated narrative to go awry, but thankfully, it never did and the result is an extremely well done and memorable book. There\u2019s a certain special something in King\u2019s writing that pulls directly on the heartstrings, explaining her legions of devoted fans.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raquel Laing #2 Those Who Are Gone is the follow-up to Laurie King\u2019s 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[919,1020,8,2585,1276,2586,2584],"class_list":["post-7189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-bantam","tag-laurie-r-king","tag-police","tag-raquel-laing","tag-robin-agnew","tag-tangled-family-roots","tag-those-who-are-gone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7204,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189\/revisions\/7204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}