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Kellie (USA: NC) (2007/05/19):
#9 of the Havers/Lynley Series
Another great one by George! This was about Barbara and her Pakistani neighbor. She finds out he is called away to the beach to help out some family in crisis. She figures out through press releases that he is there to help his family with the murder of the future son-in-law. Since she is on leave to recover from her injuries from the last book, she decides to go to the coast and see if she can see whats going on. She finds out, the lead investigator is someone she went to the academy with. Emily. Emily lets her in on the case and it takes off from there. This is strictly about Havers. Lynley, and Helen are on their honeymoon and St. James and Deborah do not appear. The plot revolves around the relationship between the Pakistanis and the local British who are trying to live in harmony in this coastal town. The murder exposes true prejudices and Barbara ends up in the middle. George is a master at the mystery and suspense. Her plots are so intricate, she weaves her way to grab your attention and you are caught in the web till the end. She has become one of my favorite authors.
Ed Hahn (USA: MT) (2009/03/05):
I slogged through this 713 page monster because I have enjoyed George's Inspector Detective Thomas Lynley stories so much, both in print and on the televised BBC series. (I also have a hard time abandoning books I begin.) This one features his side-kick and apprentice, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, no Lynley to be found. In this story, Elizabeth George takes on the cultural difficulties of Pakistani immigrants as background for the entire book. To paraphrase The Grateful Dead, "What a Long Strange Journey It Was." She admits in the Acknowledgments that attempting to write about the Pakistani experience in England was an enormous undertaking. I question why she made reading about the subject create such an enormous undertaking for us. Put simply, a recent Pakistani Immigrant is murdered and Sergeant Havers follows a Pakistani neighbor and friend, who's been asked to help the family, to Balfour le Nez on the North Sea Coast. After days and days and days of false trails and frustrating interviews she figures out who she thinks did it only to realize it was someone else she never expected. George goes on and on with internal dialogues, external dialogues, internal experiences, external experiences, etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum. At one point she spends three full pages describing two Pakistani children being harassed by a car full of toughs and losing their ice cream cones. Alright already. it could have been effectively done in two or three paragraphs. All the "good stuff" is contained in the last 75 pages. So good that it almost made reading the other 638 pages worthwhile. I do admit that George's research is impressive, her grasp of English idiom and her "Murder Mystery" plotting are all very good, especially for an American author, but it will be a while before I try another of her books.
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