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Summary
Summary
This extraordinarily well-reviewed first novel introduces Scotland Yard's Inspector Thomas Lynley and his assistant, Barbara Havers, as they investigate a daughter's brutal murder of her deeply religious father.
Summary
To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale's lush green valleys. Three hundred years ago, as legend goes, the frightened Yorkshire villagers smothered a crying babe in Keldale Abbey, where they'd hidden to escape the ravages of Cromwell's raiders.
Now into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an axe in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry."
Yet as Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale's dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a shattering series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley--and in their own lives as well.
Author Notes
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 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)
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 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)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her debut novel, George too often plays to the gallery with characterizations broad enough to border on caricature. The legendharking back to violent events in Cromwell's timethat surrounds local Keldale Abbey pales in comparison to a modern-day crime committed in this quiet corner of Yorkshire, England: Roberta Teys, a silent, obese adolescent, is accused of killing her church-going father with an axe. The detectives sent by Scotland Yard to investigate are a mismatched pair. Inspector Thomas Lynley is smooth, attractive and utterly upper-class; ``stubby, sturdy'' detective-sergeant Barbara Havers, conscious of her plain appearance and lower-class origins, considers Lynley a ``sodding little fop.'' Thrown together, they weigh the general conviction in the villagethat Roberta could not possibly have wielded the bloody axeagainst mounting evidence that damns the now catatonic girl. In sifting slowly through the ashes of the past, the detectives find enough horrific skeletons in every closet to lead them to a climax unexpectedly loaded with fire and fury. While Lynley seems rather bland despite emotion roiling beneath the surface, it is Havers' painful secrets and driving rage that encourage one to overlook decidedly uneven passages in this essentially intriguing psychological thriller. 35,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Awesome first-fiction venture that immediately thrusts the author into P.D. James' dark orbit--with a peel-the-layers-off tale of utter emotional devastation, relieved only by the deep sensitivity and kindnesses of the detective hero, Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley. Lynley, handsome, wealthy, and brilliant, is ""so damnably charming"" that pugfaced, ill-tempered probational partner Det. Sgt. Barbara Havers ""couldn't understand why every criminal in the city simply didn't surrender to accommodate him."" Now, Lynley must resolve a beheading already confessed to by the victim's obesely bloated daughter Roberta, who was found next to William Teys' body dressed in her Sunday best. She insisted she did it, said she wasn't sorry, and then slipped into catatonia. The true explanation is a horrific saga of abandonment, sexual manipulation, wistful rationalizations, and woeful coping--involving a child-bride, a daughter-sister forced into playing mummy (in every adult sense), child rape, infanticide, debauchery absolved in the confessional, a child victimized by her mother's grief, a woman's malicious enthrallment of two lovers (psychologically incapacitating both men), and all too many people sustaining their own lives by throwing others into chronic jeopardy. At the close, most readers, echoing Lynley, will wish that they too had had the opportunity to decapitate--at the very least--William Teys. Brilliantly drawn here are: the awful American tourists who gleefully impart the legend of the Keldate baby; Havers' claustrophobic family life; Roberta and sister Gillian connecting in anguish with the credible help of a hospital professional. There's perhaps a shade too much symmetry (the Havers/Teys shrines, for example, and the all-too-intentionally unseeing prelates), but let's not quibble: this is a marvelous book and a searing debut. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A tricky, multilayered, ambitious, and ultimately breathtaking debut mystery that may deliver, in its elegantly aristocratic sleuth, a serious rival for P. D. James' cerebral Adam Dalgliesh. Urbane inspector Thomas Lynley-a fascinating mix of public school bravado and appealing sensitivity-is sent to the wilds of Yorkshire, where an obese girl has been found sitting by the headless corpse of her father, covered in his blood and proclaiming her guilt. Pairing the suave Lynley with the plain, utterly charmless sergeant Barbara Havers, George creates a bizarre study in contrasts. The plot is slightly overloaded with clues, as the small Yorkshire village seemingly teems in bastard offspring, secret affairs, and, for the two daughters of the murdered man, a long, brutal history of incestuous abuse. This first-rate whodunit has enough psychological interplay and character pyrotechnics to fuel several perfectly good mysteries. PLR. [OCLC] 87-47906
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her debut novel, George too often plays to the gallery with characterizations broad enough to border on caricature. The legendharking back to violent events in Cromwell's timethat surrounds local Keldale Abbey pales in comparison to a modern-day crime committed in this quiet corner of Yorkshire, England: Roberta Teys, a silent, obese adolescent, is accused of killing her church-going father with an axe. The detectives sent by Scotland Yard to investigate are a mismatched pair. Inspector Thomas Lynley is smooth, attractive and utterly upper-class; ``stubby, sturdy'' detective-sergeant Barbara Havers, conscious of her plain appearance and lower-class origins, considers Lynley a ``sodding little fop.'' Thrown together, they weigh the general conviction in the villagethat Roberta could not possibly have wielded the bloody axeagainst mounting evidence that damns the now catatonic girl. In sifting slowly through the ashes of the past, the detectives find enough horrific skeletons in every closet to lead them to a climax unexpectedly loaded with fire and fury. While Lynley seems rather bland despite emotion roiling beneath the surface, it is Havers' painful secrets and driving rage that encourage one to overlook decidedly uneven passages in this essentially intriguing psychological thriller. 35,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Awesome first-fiction venture that immediately thrusts the author into P.D. James' dark orbit--with a peel-the-layers-off tale of utter emotional devastation, relieved only by the deep sensitivity and kindnesses of the detective hero, Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley. Lynley, handsome, wealthy, and brilliant, is ""so damnably charming"" that pugfaced, ill-tempered probational partner Det. Sgt. Barbara Havers ""couldn't understand why every criminal in the city simply didn't surrender to accommodate him."" Now, Lynley must resolve a beheading already confessed to by the victim's obesely bloated daughter Roberta, who was found next to William Teys' body dressed in her Sunday best. She insisted she did it, said she wasn't sorry, and then slipped into catatonia. The true explanation is a horrific saga of abandonment, sexual manipulation, wistful rationalizations, and woeful coping--involving a child-bride, a daughter-sister forced into playing mummy (in every adult sense), child rape, infanticide, debauchery absolved in the confessional, a child victimized by her mother's grief, a woman's malicious enthrallment of two lovers (psychologically incapacitating both men), and all too many people sustaining their own lives by throwing others into chronic jeopardy. At the close, most readers, echoing Lynley, will wish that they too had had the opportunity to decapitate--at the very least--William Teys. Brilliantly drawn here are: the awful American tourists who gleefully impart the legend of the Keldate baby; Havers' claustrophobic family life; Roberta and sister Gillian connecting in anguish with the credible help of a hospital professional. There's perhaps a shade too much symmetry (the Havers/Teys shrines, for example, and the all-too-intentionally unseeing prelates), but let's not quibble: this is a marvelous book and a searing debut. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A tricky, multilayered, ambitious, and ultimately breathtaking debut mystery that may deliver, in its elegantly aristocratic sleuth, a serious rival for P. D. James' cerebral Adam Dalgliesh. Urbane inspector Thomas Lynley-a fascinating mix of public school bravado and appealing sensitivity-is sent to the wilds of Yorkshire, where an obese girl has been found sitting by the headless corpse of her father, covered in his blood and proclaiming her guilt. Pairing the suave Lynley with the plain, utterly charmless sergeant Barbara Havers, George creates a bizarre study in contrasts. The plot is slightly overloaded with clues, as the small Yorkshire village seemingly teems in bastard offspring, secret affairs, and, for the two daughters of the murdered man, a long, brutal history of incestuous abuse. This first-rate whodunit has enough psychological interplay and character pyrotechnics to fuel several perfectly good mysteries. PLR. [OCLC] 87-47906