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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Woodburn Public Library | George | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Jefferson Public Library | MYSTERY GEORGE, E. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Silver Falls Library | MYS GEORGE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
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 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.
Summary
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 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.
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
Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley of New Scotland Yard investigates murder at Cambridge University as he continues his suit for the love of Lady Helen in George's ( A Suitable Vengeance ) latest well-crafted mystery. The high-born Lynley and his sergeant, Barbara Havers, whose personal dilemmas revolve around choosing adequate care for her increasingly senile mother, are sent to advise the Cambridge constabulary after student Elena Weaver, a long-distance runner and daughter of highly respected university history professor Anthony Weaver, is found battered to death near a running path. As the investigation reveals that Elena, who was deaf, was not at all the innocent naif her doting father imagined, Lynley comes to understand Lady Helen's deep-rooted questions about their relationship and their individual independence. Another murder occurs and assorted extracurricular passions among prominent academics are bared; George also explores such issues as whether deafness is a cultural stigma or a genuine handicap, the nature of family identity and betrayal, and the imperatives of the creative temperament. While elements of the plot are somewhat stretched, George's story never fails to engage. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo . (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The fifth outing for Scotland Yard's Inspector Lynley (rich, sleek aristocrat) and Sergeant Havers (rough-edged, bitter plain- Jane)--this time called up to Cambridge to investigate the brutal murder of a sexy, unstable, deaf student. Who ambushed Elena Weaver during one of her usual early- morning runs and pummeled her to death? Suspects abound--especially once an autopsy reveals that Elena was pregnant. She had accused one teacher of sexual harassment, had been having an affair with another (married) one. She'd also been involved with a deaf-rights activist. Meanwhile, she was having stormy times with her overprotective father, a Cambridge don hoping for a major new appointment, and with her edgy stepmother. And is it just coincidence that the woman who finds Elena's body, an important local artist, was the sometime mistress of Elena's father? As usual, George lays on the psychosexual Sturm und Drang with a sure, if slightly heavy, hand; the dialogue occasionally thickens into awkward, stagy speeches. Also as usual, the sleuths contend with personal anguish: Havers must deal with a senile mum; Lynley continues his tediously drawn-out courtship of Lady Helen--an overwrought imitation of Lord Peter and Miss Vane. But, though uneven and puffy, this is George's best work since her debut (A Great Deliverance)--a generally absorbing job in the P.D. James manner, without the excesses and missteps of the other Lynley/Havers outings.
Booklist Review
When student Elena Weaver jogs across a bridge spanning the River Cam and stumbles into a fatal ambush, a summons goes out to Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley. George has detailed him to dig into homicides four times before (most recently in A Suitable Vengeance) and has earned an expectant readership ready to be regaled by arch characterization, elegantly applied detail, and a horse race among candidates for the villain. With his "proletarian sidekick" Barbara Havers serving as a foil to the aristocratic dons lurking around the gothic spires of Cambridge U., Inspector Lynley interviews those who knew the victim, who emerges as casting a rather salacious spell on all men who met her. In fact, a tangled skein of extracurricular boffing emerges, whose weathervane circumstances in turn point to a radical-chic Shakespearean, a love-struck hearing-impaired student, Elena's tight-lipped and icy stepmother, and so on. A lesbian complication arises when another jogger catches a chestful of lead, and George ostensibly sends things off on a tangent by having Lynley moon over aloof Lady Helen. Ah, but that dance of romance (presumably to be continued in the next mystery) helps connect a bit of artistic evidence to a painter who happened to discover Elena's bludgeoned body at the outset. There's a spurned lover somewhere in this fog-enshrouded stage, and the dendritic plot channels the whodunnit connoisseur by eddies and torrents toward an unexpected culprit. (Reviewed May 1, 1992)0553081187Gilbert Taylor
Publisher's Weekly Review
Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley of New Scotland Yard investigates murder at Cambridge University as he continues his suit for the love of Lady Helen in George's ( A Suitable Vengeance ) latest well-crafted mystery. The high-born Lynley and his sergeant, Barbara Havers, whose personal dilemmas revolve around choosing adequate care for her increasingly senile mother, are sent to advise the Cambridge constabulary after student Elena Weaver, a long-distance runner and daughter of highly respected university history professor Anthony Weaver, is found battered to death near a running path. As the investigation reveals that Elena, who was deaf, was not at all the innocent naif her doting father imagined, Lynley comes to understand Lady Helen's deep-rooted questions about their relationship and their individual independence. Another murder occurs and assorted extracurricular passions among prominent academics are bared; George also explores such issues as whether deafness is a cultural stigma or a genuine handicap, the nature of family identity and betrayal, and the imperatives of the creative temperament. While elements of the plot are somewhat stretched, George's story never fails to engage. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo . (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The fifth outing for Scotland Yard's Inspector Lynley (rich, sleek aristocrat) and Sergeant Havers (rough-edged, bitter plain- Jane)--this time called up to Cambridge to investigate the brutal murder of a sexy, unstable, deaf student. Who ambushed Elena Weaver during one of her usual early- morning runs and pummeled her to death? Suspects abound--especially once an autopsy reveals that Elena was pregnant. She had accused one teacher of sexual harassment, had been having an affair with another (married) one. She'd also been involved with a deaf-rights activist. Meanwhile, she was having stormy times with her overprotective father, a Cambridge don hoping for a major new appointment, and with her edgy stepmother. And is it just coincidence that the woman who finds Elena's body, an important local artist, was the sometime mistress of Elena's father? As usual, George lays on the psychosexual Sturm und Drang with a sure, if slightly heavy, hand; the dialogue occasionally thickens into awkward, stagy speeches. Also as usual, the sleuths contend with personal anguish: Havers must deal with a senile mum; Lynley continues his tediously drawn-out courtship of Lady Helen--an overwrought imitation of Lord Peter and Miss Vane. But, though uneven and puffy, this is George's best work since her debut (A Great Deliverance)--a generally absorbing job in the P.D. James manner, without the excesses and missteps of the other Lynley/Havers outings.
Booklist Review
When student Elena Weaver jogs across a bridge spanning the River Cam and stumbles into a fatal ambush, a summons goes out to Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley. George has detailed him to dig into homicides four times before (most recently in A Suitable Vengeance) and has earned an expectant readership ready to be regaled by arch characterization, elegantly applied detail, and a horse race among candidates for the villain. With his "proletarian sidekick" Barbara Havers serving as a foil to the aristocratic dons lurking around the gothic spires of Cambridge U., Inspector Lynley interviews those who knew the victim, who emerges as casting a rather salacious spell on all men who met her. In fact, a tangled skein of extracurricular boffing emerges, whose weathervane circumstances in turn point to a radical-chic Shakespearean, a love-struck hearing-impaired student, Elena's tight-lipped and icy stepmother, and so on. A lesbian complication arises when another jogger catches a chestful of lead, and George ostensibly sends things off on a tangent by having Lynley moon over aloof Lady Helen. Ah, but that dance of romance (presumably to be continued in the next mystery) helps connect a bit of artistic evidence to a painter who happened to discover Elena's bludgeoned body at the outset. There's a spurned lover somewhere in this fog-enshrouded stage, and the dendritic plot channels the whodunnit connoisseur by eddies and torrents toward an unexpected culprit. (Reviewed May 1, 1992)0553081187Gilbert Taylor