After watching the incredible Mystery! series, I'd been meaning to read some Elizabeth George for a while now. I started reading her first Inspector Lynley mystery (A Great Deliverance I believe? Is that the one where some senior cop's wife was incredibly compatible for him because she was "both an intellectual and sexual delight?") but I was interrupted on the way to the end.

So this one's my first real read and honestly, I expected more. Long, gooey passages of supposed insight into other characters', um, character and a clumsy race angle that seems more tacked on than a vital plot element. Class is an inexplicably broad divide. Maybe as Obama-era Americans, we're now getting a crash course in "Classism 101: Oh Yeah It Really Does Exist", but I've seen one-off conversations between Ivy Leaguers and plumbers that were less functionally awkward (for those who argue that an Ivy Leaguer isn't the American social equivalent of British aristocracy: meritocracy isn't so if you've got the money to buy your kid's way into SAT summer camp.) From what I remember though, I have the feeling that our knowledge of modern class mores among Lynley and his friends are supposed to be inherited from the first book and if that's so, that's some mighty thin exposition. In any case, watching Havers bite her tongue on everything she says to Lynley is tres ridicule (too lazy to look up slashy mark). Havers is the designated acid-tongued harbinger of class resentment, the "oops I shouldn't have but I said it anyway because I'm using my uncultured social ineptitude as a front and I'm much sharper than you think" character, except she's only allowed to be so at Lynley's discretion. A relationship built on their ability to functionally resolve end goals isn't much to build a book on. Good thing a mystery is a book with an explicitly stated goal!

Lynley is about as irritating a tortured, patrician protagonist as I'm supposed to find him. Havers is fascinating and needs more screen time; I'm sick of looking at her through Lynley's eyes all the time. Frankly I'm sick of Lynley feeling guilty about pulling rank on her but doing it anyway; it's a predictable character quirk coming from him at this point.

Read it or no?

Read it to pass the time.

I'll probably keep more of an eye on the TV series and maybe try Lynley in print at another date.

A lovelorn Lord Asherton/Inspector Thomas Lynley waits for Lady Helen Clyde to return from Greece as he investigates the murder of thirteen-year-old Matthew Whately. As in Payment in Blood, Lynley has to deal with class affiliations in the form of an Eton classmate who is an instructor at the school and a suspect. Lynley's partner, Sergeant Barbara Havers brings her usual ascerbic perspective to the case while on the homefront dealing with her ailing parents. This is the darkest of the first three of George's Inspector Lynley mysteries with no ray of redemption. ( )

After reading this book I noticed the series on TV and I have to say that the characters are quite well mirrored on both. Lynley is constantly fighting the perception that he isn't comitted to the job, that this is just a hobby for him and Havers is constantly having to balance her life and her work. This story has her having to face up to her father's increasing incapacity and her mother's descent into Altzheimers. It's an interesting balance of characters and our two heroes use the strengths that they bring to the situations well.

The murder in this story is of a young boy, a scholarship boy in a British Boarding School who turns up in a graveyard miles away from the school, naked and dead. Lynley knows one of the teachers from his school days.

As the story unravels there's layers upon layers and things, while pretty predictable, are well drawn out.

This is a series I really will have to start reading. I got enough from the characters that reading things out of sequence doesn't seem to matter much but I think I may start at the beginning and work my way through things.

Not a keeper but close. ( )

This is a very dark book. Lynley is having problems with his relationship, Havers has parent problems, Corntel - an old school chum of Lynley can't perform without the stimulus of pornography; oh, and by the way, the case is that of a schoolboy tortured and murdered.
It takes considerable skill to balance these grim story ideas without producing a maudlin or offensive tome. It is to Elizabeth George's credit that she achieves this, without appearing to try.
For once, I am not surprised that the book was considerably re-written for its outing as a television programme but, as so often is the case, the book exceeds the TV version by a fair margin. Four hundred plus pages flew by and I was more thoughtful than depressed at the conclusion. ( )

The peace at elite private school Bredgar Chambers is shattered when the corpse of one of its students is found dumped naked in a graveyard some ways away. In an attempt to hush up the investigation and protect its reputation, teacher John Corntel turns to his own former school chum Inspector Lynley to launch a discreet investigation into the death. But the more time Lynley and Havers spend at the school, the more it becomes apparent that something evil has been going on within its ivy-covered walls. And little Matthew Whatley had stumbled into something much too big for him to handle…

This is the third book in the Inspector Lynley mystery series. These are best read in order to follow the twists and turns of the detectives personal lives (here Lynley's unhappy yearning for Helen, St. James' difficulties with his wife, and Havers' attempts to juggle her work and caring for increasingly senile parents). George does a wonderful job both bringing her characters to life as real people with families and emotions outside of their work and of creating a gripping story surrounding the murder. The murderer came as a surprise to me, though there were a number of clues (and of course, red herrings) that indicated the outcome. All told, I thought it fit together very well from a mystery standpoint, and I loved the little glimpses into the murdered boy's family and their grieving process. It also made me glad I never had to go to any sort of boarding school...

Also posted at my blog. ( )