Lock & Mori
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
In modern-day London, two brilliant high school students meet. A murder will bring them together. The truth very well might drive them apart.
You know their names. Now discover their beginnings.
Someone has been murdered in London’s Regent’s Park, and sixteen-year-old Lock has challenged his classmate Mori to solve the crime before he does. His only rule: they must share every clue with each other.
Mori reluctantly agrees, but what begins as fun and games quickly becomes sinister. As she gets closer to solving the case—and more and more drawn to Lock—she discovers that the murder is connected to her own past. Now she’s keeping secrets from Lock, her family, and her best friend, secrets with dire consequences.
To save herself and loved ones, Mori is prepared to take matters into her own hands. Will Lock be standing by her side when it’s all over? That’s one mystery Mori cannot solve.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Petty debuts with a suspenseful, sure-footed mystery, set in present-day London and starring a teenage Holmes and Moriarty. The narrator, James "Mori" Moriarty, meets the absent-minded, egotistical, and truth-obsessed "Lock" at school. They are both curious, analytical observers, so when they learn of a bizarre murder, in which a man is found stabbed with his hands in his pockets, they decide to investigate. The teens are both unmoored: Lock's mother is ill, and Mori's father has been abusing Mori and her brothers ever since their mother died six months ago. Lock and Mori initially promise to keep no secrets from each other, but when Mori suspects her mother may have been involved with this and other murders, she withholds information, putting both teens in harm's way. The chemistry between the protagonists is at the heart of the story, and their sparring relationship predictably, but enjoyably, develops into romance. While some readers may guess the killer's identity early on, this is still a quick-moving mystery distinguished by clear writing, memorable imagery, and some keen insights into human fragility. Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
Stellar debut
This book was entrancing from start to finish. Every time I had to put it down, I cried a little inside. The characters, though partly based on the tried and true Sherlock and Moriarty we all know, are filled with new life through Petty's masterful puppeteering of all the right words.
Sherlock as a teenager is just as interesting and awkward as you would expect him to be. Clueless about how to deal with people, and just new enough to the detective game to be even more irritating than his older incarnations. Someone you simultaneously want to know, be friends with, and jealously despise his talents and lack of tact all at once.
Moriarty, here a young high school girl who recently experienced an upheaval that completely rearranged her whole home life, is an engrossing character. That she is written more interestingly than a fully realized Sherlock Holmes is a testament of its own right. Although I occasionally wanted to scream at her for her lapse in judgement, like any good origin story, Lock & Mori shows you how she comes into her own.
With a mystery of high school proportion, these budding detectives aren't in over there heads, so it can be forgiven that the solution is easily guessed early on. Still, there is plenty of drama, suspense, and daring-do to propel the reader to the very last page, and then on an instant mission to find if the release date for the second in the series has been announced.