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Summary
Summary
Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead--a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Together they uncover dark, complex relationships in this rural village, relationships that bring men and women together with a passion, with grief, or with the intention to kill. Peeling away layer after layer of personal history to reveal the torment of a fugitive spirit, Missing Joseph is award-winning author Elizabeth George's greatest achievement.
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)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The title of this layered, intricate mystery could refer to the husband and father rarely included in paintings of the Madonna and Child or to an infant victim of crib death 15 years before the grim winter of the story's setting. Both possibilities resonate as George's forensic analyst Simon St. James and Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley of New Scotland Yard, both last seen in For the Sake of Elena , unravel a case that embraces issues of sexuality, procreation and familial love. In Lancashire, in gray, bone-chilling December, the vicar of Winslough is found poisoned by water hemlock, which was served--in an apparent accident--by an herbalist, a solitary woman whose sexually precocious daughter the vicar had been counseling. Simon and his wife Deborah, troubled by their failure to conceive a child, take a long week-end at Winslough in January and are drawn into village gossip about the death, which Simon doubts could have been unintended. Irregularities in the local police follow-up (the constable is sleeping with the herbalist) prompt him to call on Tommy to reopen the case. Probing relationships between lovers and between parents and children (notable here are those between the constable and his retired-copper father, between the vicar's housekeeper and her mom, both schooled in the local witch tradition), George sustains suspense as Tommy traces the vicar's death back through London to a long-ago suicide near Truro. A liberal dose of unhappiness widely applied and a tendency to talkiness are easily tolerable in this deftly plotted, highly atmospheric novel. Author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
What price motherhood? That's the question George ponders in the sixth (For the Sake of Elena, 1992, etc.) of her multipeopled, slow-paced endeavors. Here, Simon Allcourt St. James and his chronically miscarrying wife Deborah are looking forward to a respite from the adoption question with a visit to Winslough and its vicar, Robin Sage--but Sage is dead, an apparent accident caused when aloof, mysterious herbalist Juliet Spence mistook water hemlock for wild parsnip and served it for dinner. Not bloody likely, thinks Simon, and calls in aristocratic Tommy Lynley of New Scotland Yard. Lynley not only reopens the case but takes local constable, Colin Shepherd, Juliet's lover, to task for mishandling it from the start. Was Juliet only trying to protect her 13-year- old daughter, Maggie, from Sage's inappropriate advances? Did Sage know the identity of Maggie's father, a shadowy figure Juliet has refused to talk about? Sage himself had a few secrets, including an infant son who was a cot-death fatality and a wife who leapt off a ferry and was eventually declared dead. As St. James, Lynley, and feisty Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers track Sage's last days, the constable searches for a scapegoat. The facts, however, inexorably lead back to his own lover--and the depths a mother will go to in order to deal with the loss of her child. A lesser George--with polarized characters too often engaged in lengthy, numbing speechifying (though young Maggie's school chums are a lively bunch) and with Lynley and Havers bypassed for most of the book (a likely disappointment for their fans). Still, fewer than usual over-the-top descriptive passages are a welcome relief.
Booklist Review
George's sixth book featuring Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley displays the elegant and intelligent writing that has put her on the best-seller list before (For the Sake of Elena in 1992, A Great Deliverance in 1988). Her latest effort offers a compelling exploration of the complex emotions buried in the human soul. She examines relationships--mother-daughter, husband-wife, father-son, loved-lover--and the question of what is right versus what is moral. At the heart of the story are spirited Maggie Spence and her aloof, mysterious mother, Juliet, who's been accused of accidentally poisoning the village vicar. When Deborah St. James and her forensic scientist husband, Simon, visit the Spence's Lancashire village, they hear complaints from the locals that the murder investigation was mishandled, leaving critical questions unanswered and arousing suspicions of a cover-up. When St. James asks his old friend Lynley to help investigate further, they find that the truth is infinitely complex; even after they've identified the murderer, there's little satisfaction because, in their search, families, careers, loves, and lives have been destroyed. George is a gifted wordsmith who writes with depth, candor, and passion, and she has a rare understanding of human feelings and emotions. This powerful and moving story won't be easily forgotten. ~--Emily Melton