Product Description

"Aspectacular new voice in myster writing... She invites comparison with both P.D. James and Ruth Rendell in the psychological interest of her characters and the intricacy and ingenuity of her plotting"-Los Angeles Times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1405652 in Books
• Published on: 1993
• Binding: Paperback
• 374 pages

Customer Reviews

Second Installment in Lynley-Havers Series is Solid
The second installment in Elizabeth George's successful Lynley-Havers mystery series is a solid successor to the first book, A Great Deliverance. In this story, the melding of the cozy, police procedural, and hard-boiled genres that was balanced so well in the first book leans a little more to the cozy side of things, with a trip to Scotland to investigate a murder on an ancient Scottish estate (turned up-scale bed and breakfast), which evolves into a classic locked-room mystery with a cast of illustrious and spoiled suspects. The emphasis is a bit more on Lynley than Havers in this story, which is expected since he promotes more of the cozy feel, while Havers promotes more of the hard-boiled feel. However, Havers fans should not despair -- her dark side is still there, althouth a bit tempered. All in all, this mystery advances the ongoing tale of these two seemingly ill-matched yet complementary partners, by exploring Lynley's "dark side", fleshing him out a bit more than in the first book.

Really good
Even though George paints a somewhat old-fashioned portrait of English life, she is still able to write very very good mysteries.

Her detecive thrillers are clever, intuitive, have nice twists, good, well evoked settings, and are very well written, if somewhat OVER written.

the mystery here is first class as ever. she writes with the style of agatha christie, and comes up with solutions that the dead queen would be proud of. It is only a shame that Lynley is not quite as interesting as Poirot. However, the relationships the main characters 5 characters really are VERY interesting. they add weight, credibility, and realism to the story. they add a more personal and intimate side, and prove an ongoing drama to mix with that of the different crimes which come up in each book.

She is very good at drawing her character, and very good at coming up with agatha christie style plots. her psychology is accurate, and her writing very descriptive.

Definitely worth a read. This second book was very very good. So far, i dont think she written a bad one, and i've read nearly all of them. A good build up A Great Deliverance, and got the series off to a really smashing start.

Another fine addition to the mystery genre
I enjoy the Lynley/Havers series very much and found this book very hard to put down. The central mystery involves the death of a Playwright on a Scottish estate and the cast of suspects that were involved. The story moves from the estate to various other locations which keeps the reader interested.

There were some problems that I had with the story. There were too many characters and sub-plots involved that took away from the main mystery- including the romantic turmoil of Lynley and some past crimes. There was also a conspiracy plot thrown which only took away from the main mystery.

I did like the character development and I did feel for Lynley and Havers at various times during the novel. This is still a good mystery to add to your collection and I will continue to follow this series.