I got hooked last year on the British Television series, "Mystery" which often features George's Inspector Lynley. I was surprised to hear a Welsh friend excoriate the TV series, since I thought they were great! Well. It seems the show's producers changed everything but the names, so I can now see her point!!

Reading this while taking a course on "Family Systems" has been fun. I won't bore you with technical talk, but believe me, George seems to ping on everything we have been discussing in class! Hmmm. Wonder if she knew....?

A fun book, leading the reader to a no surprise ending while delivering quite a few surprises along the way. I look forward to other books in the series.

This was certainly better than What Came Before He Shot Her, but it is far from a return to George's earlier brilliance. I figured out the end to the mystery on page 384 of a 603 page book, without really trying. The characterization was a bit unrealistic to me. Lynley finds a body while he is wandering off mourning his wife and child, and the detective in charge of the murder investigation puts him in charge of key parts of the investigation? At least Havers points out how irregular this is, but still, it's not believable.

That said, I did read it compulsively to the end, and there were mysteries about the characters that I did not completely figure out until they were explained (although that may have been partly a matter of will on my part). I hate to be critical of an author that has written many excellent books I have really enjoyed; I know this is a very difficult thing to do well, but I have to admit I am a bit disappointed. I really hope that she continues to get better as she puts the self-indulgent mess that was What Came Before He Shot Her further and further behind her.

So, all in all, much, MUCH better than WCBHSH, but not up to her usual standard. Hopefully she will continue the upward trend, though.

My third book to read this vacation. (I still have to finish the second one I started, wasn't really a good holiday-read). This was a very good holiday read! Another Lynley-novel by Elizabeth George. The book made me feel like I was there, in Cornwall. Like I was there on the spot, with all those people she brings to life and who had means and motive to murder the boy who was murdered.

I like her books because of the peoples' lives being described, their interactions, the murder getting solved peace by peace, the recurrence of the same characters solving the murders, the English atmosphere and most of all I like her sense of humor in the character of Barbara Havers. If she writes a book without DS Havers in it, it won't be complete. I just love her! ( )

this one didn't quite gel for me as well as Lynley stories usually do. a large and interesting cast of characters to lend their varied PoVs, one theme of catastrophic loss in different permutations, another of daddy issues, another of lies and identity issues, a lovely dark and oppressive setting along the Cornwall coast - what was not to like? i guess it seemed to me to belabor its various points a tad too often, manipulate the characters and their stories a bit too much to get to where the writer was going. and i dunno but maybe i'm just not English enough to get the whole class-angst thing that blindsides Lynley in the climax of this one; i'm all 'get over your various selves, and don't be so foolish', even though i know that's not where the story wants me to be. also, i can't believe Lynley couldn't have just said no to Detective Inspector Hannaford in the first place; sure, then there wouldn't have been a story, but it's possible i prematurely used up my store of suspension of disbelief on that one, though the writer clearly took it as, well, you know, read. so anyway, the whole thing left me a bit unexpectedly disgruntled. ( )

Elizabeth George has redeemed herself somewhat with this latest novel in the Lynley/Havers series. The last few books in the series I've found to be too drawn out and almost painful to read. Elizabeth George is an exception when it comes to the "bigger is better" approach to books. She has this way of blathering on and on and on...on and on and on...on and on and on... Painful stuff.

I enjoyed this book though it was overlong and I had a hard time keeping up with some of the characters. I'm still on the fence about my feelings for Thomas Lynley, and he was still annoying throughout the entire book, but Barbara Havers eventually made an appearance and I found some of the minor characters to be intriguing.

I guess I liked the book so much because the whole layout was done in such a way that it was impossible to get bored with one character. George changed the point-of-view so frequently that it hardly ever got tedious, which was my major complaint with With Noone as Witness. The book could have been 200 pages shorter (per norm), but it was still a delight to read. ( )