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In North Kensington three orphaned mixed-race children are bounced from one home to another. The middle child Joel takes care of the youngest, Toby, who isn't quite right. When a local gang threatens Toby, Joel makes a pact with the devil that ends in the murder of Thomas Lynley's wife.Tags
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Die Innenansicht eines Mordes
Inspector Lynleys Frau und sein ungeborenes Kind fielen einem willkürlichen Akt sinnloser Gewalt zum Opfer. Doch was hat einen gerade erst 12-Jährigen zu dieser schrecklichen Tat getrieben?
Elizabeth George nimmt den Leser mit auf eine brisante Spurensuche, die noch lange nachwirkt.
Nur wenige Straßen trennen das noble Kensington, wo Chief Inspector Lynley und seine Frau Helen wohnen, von North Kensington. Dort sind der kleine Joel und seine Geschwister bei ihrer Tante Kendra untergeschlüpft. Kendra tut für die elternlosen Kinder, was sie kann, ist aber überfordert mit Ness, die die Schule schwänzt, Drogen nimmt und sich auf eine Affäre mit dem Drogendealer Blade einlässt. Als Ness merkt, dass Blade show more sie betrügt, macht sie ihm auf offener Straße eine Szene – eine Schmach, die Blade nicht auf sich sitzen lässt. Joel bemüht sich nach Kräften, die häusliche Situation unter Kontrolle zu halten und seinen kleinen Bruder Toby vor den Übergriffen grausamer Jugendlicher zu behüten. Als Joel erkennt, dass nur Blade die Macht hat, Toby zu schützen, schließt er einen Pakt mit dem Teufel – und sowohl Joel selbst als auch Lady Helen werden dessen Opfer sein …
Elizabeth George erzählt die Geschichte des 12-jährigen Joel, der unausweichlich an der Gewalttätigkeit seines Umfelds scheitert. Die große Schriftstellerin auf dem Höhepunkt ihres Schaffens – ein beeindruckendes, ergreifendes Psychogramm!
Warum Lady Helen sterben mußte - Elizabeth George blickt in Londons Abgründe
»Ich möchte England so zeigen, wie es heute ist. Es geht darum, wie die Gesellschaft mit Kindern umgeht und dabei scheitert, auch wenn sie die besten Absichten hat. Ich wollte, dass sich die Leser genau so viel Sorgen um den 12-jährigen Joel machen, wie sie sich um Lady Helen gemacht haben.«
Elizabeth George erzählt die Geschichte einer fast zwangsläufigen Eskalation von Gewalt und Gegengewalt, die nicht anders als in einer Verzweiflungstat enden kann. Es ist dem Leser unmöglich, sich der Dynamik zu entziehen, die die Handlung von der ersten Seite an entwickelt. Dass am Ende mit Lady Helen eine unbeteiligte Person zu Tode kommt – darin zeigt sich einmal mehr das meisterliche Können dieser begnadeten Erzählerin. show less
Inspector Lynleys Frau und sein ungeborenes Kind fielen einem willkürlichen Akt sinnloser Gewalt zum Opfer. Doch was hat einen gerade erst 12-Jährigen zu dieser schrecklichen Tat getrieben?
Elizabeth George nimmt den Leser mit auf eine brisante Spurensuche, die noch lange nachwirkt.
Nur wenige Straßen trennen das noble Kensington, wo Chief Inspector Lynley und seine Frau Helen wohnen, von North Kensington. Dort sind der kleine Joel und seine Geschwister bei ihrer Tante Kendra untergeschlüpft. Kendra tut für die elternlosen Kinder, was sie kann, ist aber überfordert mit Ness, die die Schule schwänzt, Drogen nimmt und sich auf eine Affäre mit dem Drogendealer Blade einlässt. Als Ness merkt, dass Blade show more sie betrügt, macht sie ihm auf offener Straße eine Szene – eine Schmach, die Blade nicht auf sich sitzen lässt. Joel bemüht sich nach Kräften, die häusliche Situation unter Kontrolle zu halten und seinen kleinen Bruder Toby vor den Übergriffen grausamer Jugendlicher zu behüten. Als Joel erkennt, dass nur Blade die Macht hat, Toby zu schützen, schließt er einen Pakt mit dem Teufel – und sowohl Joel selbst als auch Lady Helen werden dessen Opfer sein …
Elizabeth George erzählt die Geschichte des 12-jährigen Joel, der unausweichlich an der Gewalttätigkeit seines Umfelds scheitert. Die große Schriftstellerin auf dem Höhepunkt ihres Schaffens – ein beeindruckendes, ergreifendes Psychogramm!
Warum Lady Helen sterben mußte - Elizabeth George blickt in Londons Abgründe
»Ich möchte England so zeigen, wie es heute ist. Es geht darum, wie die Gesellschaft mit Kindern umgeht und dabei scheitert, auch wenn sie die besten Absichten hat. Ich wollte, dass sich die Leser genau so viel Sorgen um den 12-jährigen Joel machen, wie sie sich um Lady Helen gemacht haben.«
Elizabeth George erzählt die Geschichte einer fast zwangsläufigen Eskalation von Gewalt und Gegengewalt, die nicht anders als in einer Verzweiflungstat enden kann. Es ist dem Leser unmöglich, sich der Dynamik zu entziehen, die die Handlung von der ersten Seite an entwickelt. Dass am Ende mit Lady Helen eine unbeteiligte Person zu Tode kommt – darin zeigt sich einmal mehr das meisterliche Können dieser begnadeten Erzählerin. show less
When I began this book -- despite the title -- I really did not understand what I was reading, gradually it dawned on me. I was reading the back story to the death of Helen Lynley. It isn't a mystery or a detective story it is a psychological sociological tale of horror. The story is unremittingly dark and grim. We are introduced to the child who shot Helen and given a taste of his world -- it is not a place that we would want to live -- it is not a rational healthy world. This book is an amazing exploration of the difficulties of living in a completely irrational world. We see a family making horrible decisions that seem pretty darned rational given the dangers and irrationality of their world. It made me think of families that did not show more leave New Orleans when Katrina struck and my Saudi friend who has few options because she is a woman -- the story allows you to see and feel what it is to be virtually without hope and without help, to feel you have no one to rely on when you are desperately in need of help. It is a horrible experience but an amazing book. show less
I picked this out of my pile of books prepared for a good Lynley mystery. I was saddened when I realized that this wouldn't be one, but a study on a London family- specifically the 12 year-old boy who shot Lynley's wife. I quickly warmed to the story though and enjoyed it very much. I liked how true the book rang- Ness claims to know the world inside and out, however, she couldn't be more naive. She is not as tough as she'd like to be- or thinks she is either. Poor Joel takes on more than he can- with no help from his sister or Aunt. I wanted to jump into the book, give him a hug and tell him it is okay. I loved how George revealed pieces of the kids history throughout the novel- small tidbits here and there, slowly revealing more and show more more. I think the best part of this book is that all the characters are well-rounded and you really get inside of their heads- we see the sadness, fear and love a struggling family deals with.
FAVORITE QUOTES: Like water that seeks its own level, misfits recognize their brothers even when they do so unconsciously. // "I'm the type one generally refers to as an English eccentric. Quite harmless and engaging to have at a dinner party where Americans are present and declaring themselves desperate to meet a real Englishman." // Joel shrugged: the adolescent boy's answer to every question he didn't want to answer, a bodily expression of the eternal whatever voiced by teenagers in hundreds of languages on at least three continents and countless islands pebbled across the Pacific. show less
FAVORITE QUOTES: Like water that seeks its own level, misfits recognize their brothers even when they do so unconsciously. // "I'm the type one generally refers to as an English eccentric. Quite harmless and engaging to have at a dinner party where Americans are present and declaring themselves desperate to meet a real Englishman." // Joel shrugged: the adolescent boy's answer to every question he didn't want to answer, a bodily expression of the eternal whatever voiced by teenagers in hundreds of languages on at least three continents and countless islands pebbled across the Pacific. show less
i confess i wouldn't have picked this one up if i'd known it what it really was: i did look carefully at it first to make sure it was a Linley mystery. and it is; except not really. it's riskier territory. then i stayed up for two nights running till 4am to read it through, so it was certainly riveting, the way she built the story. the characters come so alive, and the reader is dragged (kicking and screaming, in my case) into the narrative. and the sense of dread carries the novel: the way it grows, the way it spreads, the way it matters. until in the end, it makes perfect sense out of what we like to call a senseless crime. in that context, of course, the indictment's aimed at us. but it still works, in that No Way Out way that this show more kind of societal/psychological novel tracks. show less
Finished May 10, 2008
It took me nearly three years to finish this book because I disliked it so much.
The ending of the previous book in her series, With No One As Witness, was so unexpected, and so powerful that I actually wept over the death of a fictional character.
As this one, What Came…” was to be the backstory of that earlier work, I was eager to read it. Pretty much from page one, I was appalled.
Don’t get me wrong. Elizabeth George has done her usual superb job of plotting and characterization. Everything in this complex novel fits together logically, characters develop consistently, and there is a stunning, and very sad, twist at the end, to wit: Stanley Hynds’ (The Blade’s) longterm revenge plot against Vanessa show more Campbell.
Not many authors can sustain rising action which takes this long, and then truly satisfy at the end, with a moving, horrifying denouement. Kudos to Elizabeth George’s talent!
I hated this because the characters, the setting, the language and the plot were so unremittingly grim. Far from being an entertaining read, this was an entrée into the chaos, hopelessness and tragedy of modern life in London.
Purblind adults, overwhelming social decay, crass and selfish human nature all combine to crush a twelve-year-old in spite of his Herculean efforts to escape.
I slogged through this, chapter after chapter, hoping for some glimmer of light, only to slide further and further down the slimy slope into the tunnel of darkness which debouched onto Helen Lynley’s doorstep - and her senseless death.
Great writing - very hard to read, impossible to choose a number of stars to award show less
It took me nearly three years to finish this book because I disliked it so much.
The ending of the previous book in her series, With No One As Witness, was so unexpected, and so powerful that I actually wept over the death of a fictional character.
As this one, What Came…” was to be the backstory of that earlier work, I was eager to read it. Pretty much from page one, I was appalled.
Don’t get me wrong. Elizabeth George has done her usual superb job of plotting and characterization. Everything in this complex novel fits together logically, characters develop consistently, and there is a stunning, and very sad, twist at the end, to wit: Stanley Hynds’ (The Blade’s) longterm revenge plot against Vanessa show more Campbell.
Not many authors can sustain rising action which takes this long, and then truly satisfy at the end, with a moving, horrifying denouement. Kudos to Elizabeth George’s talent!
I hated this because the characters, the setting, the language and the plot were so unremittingly grim. Far from being an entertaining read, this was an entrée into the chaos, hopelessness and tragedy of modern life in London.
Purblind adults, overwhelming social decay, crass and selfish human nature all combine to crush a twelve-year-old in spite of his Herculean efforts to escape.
I slogged through this, chapter after chapter, hoping for some glimmer of light, only to slide further and further down the slimy slope into the tunnel of darkness which debouched onto Helen Lynley’s doorstep - and her senseless death.
Great writing - very hard to read, impossible to choose a number of stars to award show less
This is a train-wreck of a book. Because of the book before this one, we know the tragedy that this book ends with. It is part of the Thomas Lynley series, but the main characters in that series are only briefly in this book, which explains how a seemingly senseless tragedy happened.
The main characters are three siblings, Ness, Joel, and Toby. Their father is dead, their mother in a mental home, and their grandmother abandons them to go home to Jamaica. She leaves them with their aunt, Kendra. Kendra is around 40, widowed once and divorced once, working in a charity shop and trying to get a business going as a massage therapist. She has never had children, and two of these three are particularly difficult to deal with. Ness is fifteen, show more refuses to go to school and seems interested only in sex and drugs and the occasional petty theft. Toby is eight, with severe developmental disorders and a way of retreating into an imaginary world. The burden of caring for Toby mostly falls onto 12 year old Joel, the responsible one, the one who finds an unexpected talent for poetry in himself. But Joel makes an enemy, and the enemy targets Toby, who is so very vulnerable. Joel is willing to go to any lengths to protect Toby, and that is what leads him into the fatal error.
This is a hard book to read. It is, in part, about how grinding a life of poverty is, the burden and hopelessness of it. It is also in part about the errors that can be made with perfectly good intentions but a panic-inducing level of desperation. The characters at first seem unlikeable, and one doesn't want to care about them, knowing there is a terrible ending, but one learns to care. The author seems to as well, as her voice breaks through the narrative more than in her other books. She'll say, for example, something like "and that would not be his only mistake", things that jar the reader out of the narrative somewhat. In the end, it is a compelling but uncomfortable book, a picture of unalterable despair. show less
The main characters are three siblings, Ness, Joel, and Toby. Their father is dead, their mother in a mental home, and their grandmother abandons them to go home to Jamaica. She leaves them with their aunt, Kendra. Kendra is around 40, widowed once and divorced once, working in a charity shop and trying to get a business going as a massage therapist. She has never had children, and two of these three are particularly difficult to deal with. Ness is fifteen, show more refuses to go to school and seems interested only in sex and drugs and the occasional petty theft. Toby is eight, with severe developmental disorders and a way of retreating into an imaginary world. The burden of caring for Toby mostly falls onto 12 year old Joel, the responsible one, the one who finds an unexpected talent for poetry in himself. But Joel makes an enemy, and the enemy targets Toby, who is so very vulnerable. Joel is willing to go to any lengths to protect Toby, and that is what leads him into the fatal error.
This is a hard book to read. It is, in part, about how grinding a life of poverty is, the burden and hopelessness of it. It is also in part about the errors that can be made with perfectly good intentions but a panic-inducing level of desperation. The characters at first seem unlikeable, and one doesn't want to care about them, knowing there is a terrible ending, but one learns to care. The author seems to as well, as her voice breaks through the narrative more than in her other books. She'll say, for example, something like "and that would not be his only mistake", things that jar the reader out of the narrative somewhat. In the end, it is a compelling but uncomfortable book, a picture of unalterable despair. show less
Blir lite förvånad över de svala recensioner då jag till skillnad av de upplevde denna bok som mycket bra, svår att släppa ifrån sig.
Jag gillar inte deckare och inte kriminalromaner därför har denna bok varit hemma hos mig mycket länge innan jag vågade mig på den, men jag blev fast direkt.
Den kan beror på det att den inte är någon typisk deckare, utan beskriver mer livet i Londons sämre områden, och handlar först och främst om tre syskon som blir dumpade hos sin faster.
Själva brottet sker först i slutet av boken, det är vägen till brottet som beskrivs, hur de två syskonen drivs in i kriminaliteten av sin omgivning.
Detta är första jag har läst skrivet av Elizabeth George, och min nyfikhet är väckt, jag kommer show more undersöka ifall hennes andra böcker också är o typiska deckare eller om Innan döden kom är ett undantag. : 4 i betyg show less
Jag gillar inte deckare och inte kriminalromaner därför har denna bok varit hemma hos mig mycket länge innan jag vågade mig på den, men jag blev fast direkt.
Den kan beror på det att den inte är någon typisk deckare, utan beskriver mer livet i Londons sämre områden, och handlar först och främst om tre syskon som blir dumpade hos sin faster.
Själva brottet sker först i slutet av boken, det är vägen till brottet som beskrivs, hur de två syskonen drivs in i kriminaliteten av sin omgivning.
Detta är första jag har läst skrivet av Elizabeth George, och min nyfikhet är väckt, jag kommer show more undersöka ifall hennes andra böcker också är o typiska deckare eller om Innan döden kom är ett undantag. : 4 i betyg show less
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Elizabeth George was born on February 26, 1949, in Warren, Ohio. She received a bachelor's degree in education from the University of California in Riverside and a master's degree in counseling/psychology from California State University at Fullerton. She taught English in high school for about thirteen years before leaving to become a full-time show more writer. She is the New York Times and internationally best selling author of twenty British crime novels featuring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his unconventional partner Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. Her novel, A Great Deliverance, won the Anthony Award, the Agatha Award, and France's Le Grand Prix de Literature Policiere in 1989. Her crime novels have been translated into 30 languages and featured on television by the BBC. She is also the author of a young adult series set on the island where she lives in the state of Washington. Her title's include Edge of Light, The Edge of the Shadows, The Edge of the Water, I, Richard, and The Punishment She Deserves. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Goldmann (47132)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- What Came Before He Shot Her
- Original title
- What Came Before He Shot Her
- Original publication date
- 2007
- People/Characters
- Kendra Osborne; Vanessa 'Ness' Campell; Joel Campbell; Toby Campbell
- Important places
- North Kensington, London, England, UK
- Epigraph
- Better authentic mammon than a bogus god.
Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal - Dedication
- For Grace Tsukiyama
Political Liberal
Creative spirit
Mom - First words
- Joel Campbell, eleven years old at the time, began his descent towards murder with a bus ride.
- Quotations*
- Beter een echte mammon dan een valse god
Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Joel's reply to this was a nod. A single nod only, and nothing else. He gave it not because he agreed with anything the two detectives were saying but because he new that what would happen next had long been determined by the unchanging world through which he moved.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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