"A Slowly Dying Cause" by Elizabeth George

It helped to have heard Elizabeth George speak in early October at the St. Louis County Library. She was doing a promotional tour for her new novel, and among many other things, she noted that Inspector Thomas Lynley would show up late in the story. 

And Inspector Lynley does indeed show up rather late for story billed as “A Lynley Novel.” A Slowly Dying Cause, the twenty-first in the Inspector Lynley series, doesn’t even mention him until about page 120, and he and his detective sergeant, Barbara Havers, don’t really start assuming a significant role until about the middle of the book.  

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

An Evening with Elizabeth George

“As long as the stories are there to be told, I’ll be writing.” – Elizabeth George. 

Last Friday, my wife and attended an author’s talk with mystery writer Elizabeth George at the St. Louis County Library. The library’s foundation maintains a robust author program, bringing in some 150 a year. 

 

It’s been some time (like more than a decade) since we last attended one of these, an evening with poet Billy Collins. That one had been packed with some 800 people; the program was free. I remember having to park across a busy highway at a shopping mall.

 

George is the author of the Inspector Lynley mysteries. We had been fans of the PBS series (2001-2007) with Nathaniel Parker as Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. Just recently, a new version has started on Britbox, with Leo Suter as Lynley, Sofia Barclay as Havers, and Daniel May’s as a perfect malevolent detective chief inspector and Lynley’s boss. We’re enjoyed the four episodes of the first season, including Daniel Mays as the character you love to hate. In fact, we finished episode four the night before we saw Elizabeth George.

 

I’ve read about half of the books by George, now numbering 21. She’s on tour promoting the book, A Slowly Dying Cause, set in Cornwall. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Murders for October – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

I’m Leaving the UK – Ben Freeman at The Free Press.

 

Crime and no punishment in London – Mary Wakefield at The Spectator.

 

The American Bastille – Brian Kowell at Emerging Civil War.

 

Elizabeth George’s “Just One Evil Act”

It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for a while, unread, this book by mystery writer Elizabeth George. I know why it’s been sitting – a book of 723 pages requires serious commitment. It was a gift from my wife, who knew I liked the Inspector Lynley mysteries.

A couple of weeks ago, I pulled it from the shelf, and began to read, hoping that I wouldn’t like it so I could put it back on the shelf. The story of Just One Evil Act begins with a women’s roller derby in London, of all things. I wasn’t hooked from the first page; the first few pages are about a potential new love interest for Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, an earl of the realm who happens to work for Scotland Yard. His wife Helen had been rather senselessly killed in a previous novel (and I still don’t think I’ve forgiven the author for that).

By page 15, however, when Lynley finally returns a frantic phone call from his erstwhile Scotland Yard partner Sergeant Barbara Havers, I’m fully pulled into the story, and ready to tackle another 708 pages.

Barbara’s good friend and neighbor Taymullah Azhar is desperate – his daughter Hadiyyah has been taken – kidnapped – by her mother Angelina. Azhar had returned from work at a London university microbiology lab to find his daughter and her mother gone, Hadiyyah’s room stripped clean. Azhar had never married Angelina; in fact, he had left his wife and family to live with her. His daughter is his world and his family, and now she’s disappeared.

This begins a story that moves constantly between London and Lucca, Italy; between the police investigations in both countries; between private detectives in both countries; and between a multitude of related side stories and a relatively large cast of characters. It is a feat to pull all of this off in one coherent mystery, but George does it, and does it incredibly well. It would have been an easy book to lose the reader’s way in, but it never happens; it’s that well-written of a story.

Elizabeth George (and friend)

The mother’s kidnapping of Hadiyyah goes somewhat awry when the girl is really kidnapped in one of Lucca’s open-air markets; the strong passions on all sides eventually results in a murder. The Italian policeman Salvatore LoBianco, a somewhat Italian counterpoint to Lynley, manages to continue a competent investigation in spite of an ogre of a boss who’s more concerned with the political than the criminal. Their characters and relationship is a good example of how well George creates and develops characters.

What makes the story even more compelling is watching Barbara Havers spin herself into a deeper and deeper hole, almost determined to break every written and unwritten rule in helping Azhar. She leaks to a tabloid reporter; she hides what she’s doing; she lies, even to Lynley. You read with increasing anxiety as her career is headed for what looks to be the inevitable crackup.

Any other who can keep a reader going for more than 700 pages knows how to tell a good story. Just One Evil Act is just possibly Elizabeth George’s best mystery novel to date, and that should be taken as a high compliment.

Photograph of Lucca, Italy, via the European Network for Accessible Tourism.