For the Sake of Elena

I think this would have been the strongest Lynley mystery yet since the first, A Great Deliverance, were it not for one major flaw. While this didn't move me to tears as that first in the series did, this one feels all more of a piece than any of the prior George books. While in others the subplots concerning Havers' and Lynley's personal lives felt intrusive, in this one I feel for the first time since the first book George struck a good balance. Havers' dilemma with her mother, whose dementia requires constant care, and Lynley's continuing courtship of Helen doesn't feel like a distraction here, but complimentary in their themes to the murder mystery.

The crux of this novel, even more than prior mysteries, is very centered on the show more victim, Elena Weaver, and her various identities and relationships: as a deaf woman who resists attempts to define her in such terms, as the daughter of an ambitious Cambridge don and as a student who has lodged a complaint of sexual harassment against a lothario professor. George is adept not just at tossing out red herrings and feints, but in weaving together psychological depth into characters and their motivations. This is the second time I've read this one. I didn't remember the murderer. I think because George isn't so jaw-dropping flashy in her resolutions as a Christie so some ultimate twist lodges it in your brain. But I remembered things like her portrait of an artist whose wellspring of inspiration had dried, the deaf student activist who made the distinction between "deaf" (a disability) and "Deaf" (a culture) the picture of academic politics, the depiction of the incredible damage murder leaves behind and even Helen's sister, Penelope, struggling to come back to herself while her husband is determined to have her define herself as his wife and a mother.

So this definitely is one Elizabeth George book that lingers in memory years afterwards. I wouldn't quite put George up there with the very best of the mystery genre when I compare her books to the masterpieces of Christie, Tey, and Sayers, but her novels are far ahead in writing style, solid plotting and psychological depth from what you can usually find in the mystery aisle, and anyone still writing mysteries today who I've tried. I certainly care a lot more about George's recurring detectives Havers and Lynley than say Adam Dagliesh of PD James.

Thus until almost the end reading this novel, I thought I'd probably give this a top rating. So what leads me to dock it a star? Quite simply, George cheats. The resolution we get at the end just doesn't fit with what she gives us at the beginning. If this weren't so strong in other ways, I'd be tempted to lower the boom and rank this even lower, were it not so well-written and emotionally moving. show less

Elena Weaver is a beautiful, sexually precocious, and extremely troubled student at St. Stephens College in Cambridge. One morning Elena is out running when she's attacked and killed by an unknown person. Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley is assigned to the case, along with his longtime partner, Sergeant Barbara Havers. Lynley is more than happy to take on the assignment because Lady Helen Clyde, the woman he has been in love with for some time, is in Cambridge and staying with her sister Penelope. Meanwhile, Sergeant Havers has problems of her own. Her elderly mother suffers from dementia and Barbara is not able to care for her alone. After several disasters with hired caregivers, she now faces a difficult decision to either continue show more with things as they are or put her mother into an assisted living facility. The further Lynley and Havers get into the investigation of Elena's murder the less they understand. Elena's lifestyle attracted many potential suspects and more than one character had murderous intentions. Past hurts and resentments are played out and this ends up being a story of unrealized dreams and guilt and revenge. When I got to the final chapters I couldn't believe who the killer was, much less the motive.

The heart of George's stories are the deeply flawed characters. Lynley and Havers crackle with chemistry as usual and the rest of the players are equally entertaining. The description and atmosphere of Cambridge seemed very realistic. I think this is one of the best of the five books of the series and I'm definitely going to move on the #6, Finding Joseph. show less

Elena Weaver was a surprise to anyone meeting her for the first time. In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings she exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her walls. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare from her home in London, in Cambridge—where Elena was a student at St. Stephen's College—her father and his second wife each had their own very different image of the girl. As for Elena, she lived a life of casual and intense physical and emotional relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve--until someone, lying in wait along the route she ran every morning, bludgeoned her to death.

Unwilling to turn the killing over to the local police, the university calls show more in New Scotland Yard. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, enter the rarefied world of Cambridge University, where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions.

For both officers, the true identity of Elena Weaver proves elusive. Each relationship the girl left behind casts new light both on Elena and on those people who appeared to know her best—from an unsavory Swedish-born Shakespearean professor to the brooding head of the Deaf Students Union.

What's more, Elena's father, a Cambridge professor under consideration for a prestigious post, is a man with his own dark secrets. While his past sins make him neurotically dedicated to Elena and blind to her blacker side, present demons drive him toward betrayal. show less

Elena Weaver is a beautiful, sexually precocious, and extremely troubled student at St. Stephens College in Cambridge. One morning Elena is out running when she's attacked and killed by an unknown person. Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley is assigned to the case, along with his longtime partner, Sergeant Barbara Havers. Lynley is more than happy to take on the assignment because Lady Helen Clyde, the woman he has been in love with for some time, is in Cambridge and staying with her sister Penelope. Meanwhile, Sergeant Havers has problems of her own. Her elderly mother suffers from dementia and Barbara is not able to care for her alone. After several disasters with hired caregivers, she now faces a difficult decision to either continue show more with things as they are or put her mother into an assisted living facility.

The further Lynley and Havers get into the investigation of Elena's murder the less they understand. Elena's lifestyle attracted many potential suspects and more than one character had murderous intentions. Past hurts and resentments are played out and this ends up being a story of unrealized dreams and guilt and revenge. When I got to the final chapters I couldn't believe who the killer was, much less the motive.

The heart of George's stories are the deeply flawed characters. Lynley and Havers crackle with chemistry as usual and the rest of the players are equally entertaining. The description and atmosphere of Cambridge seemed very realistic. I think this is one of the best of the five books of the series and I'm definitely going to move on the #6, Finding Joseph. show less

Wow. I really really liked this one a lot. I have to say that George did a masterful job of peeling off the layers of who murdered Elena Weaver as well as how Lynley has been selfish in his pursuit of Lady Helen. We also get a great look at Havers home life now that her father has passed. Havers struggles with whether she can keep having a neighbor watch her mother or finally have her mother at a home where she can be safe, and Havers can have some sort of life.

"For the Sake of Elena" has Scotland Yard called in when a young woman, Elena Weaver, is found murdered during her morning run. Elena was a student at St. Stephen's College and had some rocky times at school and with her father and their relationship. When she's found murdered it show more ends up not only affecting her father, mother, and stepmother, but many people who all seemed to think that they knew the real Elena.
Lynley volunteers to go in after Scotland Yard is requested to oversee things. Havers and she go to Cambridge. Lynley happily because Lady Helen is there with her sister and he thinks once again he can make his case for her to love and be with him. Lynley and Havers work together very well in this one and their dynamic is more solid.

Lynley is more solid in this one. He is still thinking of Helen, but not to the detriment of the case. He and Havers play off each other very well. And then Lynley sees a way to see Helen and involve her sister in the case which at first I was kind of rolling my eyes about. However, we come to realize why Helen's sister Pen is a good woman to have involved in this.

Helen is still reluctant to be with Lynley. Living with her sister who is suffering from post-partum but also her loss of self due to her husband and his demands one does not wonder why she's reluctant to be with Lynley and be his wife. I kept hoping someone would smash her brother in law's head in.

Havers I felt the most sorry for in this one. She's doing great with not letting things that people say to her bother her. She's not as fragile in this one I think. However, she's running out of time to decide what to do with her mother. Hopefully in the next book that's laid to rest.

The secondary characters we follow, Sarah Gordon who finds Elena's body, Elena's father who is hoping to be named Chair at the college, her stepmother Justine who resents Elena and a lot of other things in her marriage, Elena's embittered mother, several men who loved and were in turns frustrated with her. I think that it was good to get a sense of Elena at the beginning and to see why she was pretty much a chameleon with everyone she met. She was always something else depending on the audience. I don't want to spoil for other readers, but I definitely wonder what would have happened if Elena had lived.

The writing was very good. I do think that the flow was slow at times. I wondered why we spent time with certain characters, it becomes clear after a while though why we did.

The setting of the college is a bit different than the boy's school we saw in "Well-Schooled in Murder." This place doesn't seem dark and full of secrets.

The ending was definitely a surprise. We find out who killed Elena and why. We also finally hopefully get an end to that whole thing with Lady Helen one way or the other. It has distracted from the main mysteries for me. show less

Completely taken with Elizabeth George and the Inspector Lynley series. THIS one...ok, it struck a bit of a personal chord with me. The crime in this book, for me, was secondary to the characters. It was that personal point of growth in Lynley where he begins to understand the personal nature in the interactions between men and women that made me shout, "YES! A man FINALLY gets it!" I will not spoil; you will just have to read the book. ;oD

While I like the Inspector Lynley BBC mysteries, I found this book rather plodding. I found Ms. George's prose very philosophical, exceedingly so at times, which slowed down the story.

Elena, a deaf student and daughter of a highly regarded professor at Cambridge is found dead by a local artist out to paint in the early morning light. Elena was a runner who used to run around 6:30 each morning and she was found along her running route.

The story centers on Inspector Lynley and Sargeant Havers' investigation and the plot revolves around deafness, infidelity, revenge and betrayal.

I plan to watch this episode on TV and I'm sure I'll like that better than the book. At less than 400 pages, this book was a chore to get through. I can't imagine show more what George's 700+ page books are like to read. I'm sure I won't find out. show less