Here I am in a primitive third world country with a fresh CARE package of books. There are enough so that we won't fight over them. My wife has taken some mysteries set in Venice and a Jane Austen. I grabbed this mystery and a history. It is an embarrassment of riches.
This is an unusual surplus of English words on the frontier of a country where few people read and fewer read books. My computer's operating system has decided that my modem shouldn't open and I am deprived of the reading and scanning of the 'net, of Blogcritics and surfing the US and world news. My Internet addiction is quieted to a background compulsion. (I sneak out to the internet cafe for short periods.)
With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George was published by Harper Collins Publishers in 2005. I am finally reading something current!
It is a page-turner. It is a formula novel. It is what I normally eschew - a serial killer novel. It is a travel book for the London of New Scotland Yard - not a guided tour kind of place
There are serial killing monsters and they exist, but I don't usually want to get into their heads. They remind me of slasher movies. They are popular and their popularity eludes me. Worse, books about serial killers put me in mind of The Silence of the Lambs, which I could neither watch nor read, even with favorite actors Anthony Hopkins and Jodi Foster.
It is a page-turner. It is and just that fact pulls it up to a much higher level of existence. A book I cannot put down even when I tell myself that I a) don't like it and b) don't approve of it; is a book worth thinking of reading.
It is a formula novel of police procedures in tracking the serial killer who, in this case, kills young boys in London and displays their bodies. I would say it sounds too much like other such novels. On reflection I decide that serial killers may not be society's most creative minds.
Article comments
1 - Bill Gallaspy
Agatha Christie said there were many times when she wanted to kill off Hercule Poirot but she wasn't really successful in doing so during her lifetime. Elizabeth George seems to have effectively dumped her protagonist, Thomas Lynley. I can't imagine anything in his life after this novel being any more interesting than watching iron rust. His subordinate, Barbara Havers, would be fired from any force worldwide for being a slovenly smart aleck who won't obey orders. Winston Nkata seems to have mostly his race going for him when it comes to promotion and he has very little romantic ability.
I have read the entire Lynley series and watched as many of them as I could on PBS. Miss George threatens us with a prequel. Knowing the destinies of her primary characters, including Lynley's wife, Helen, I can't imagine wanting to read another in the series.
2 - Cecilia Weismann
I loved Elizabeth George's books. I realize that there are time constraints on TV and so the other interesting regular characters could not be added to the scripts. HOWEVER, casting Nathaniel Parker as Inspector Lynley has spoiled the TV series for me. Physically he is not the Linley described in the books. I had hoped they would have found an actor more closely resembling the written Linley. PArker is all wrong for that role!
As for the scripts, Linley, as the series continue, is becoming more and more of a whiner, cry baby, ill tempered weak sister. Linley is confiding personal things to Havers where in the books he would never have done that. He has no dignity! He just isn't the cool and sophisticated person we think he should be.
Barbara Havers is becoming more and more glamourous (this has to be intentional) and why isn't she living in the condo that she first moved into? I had hopes there would be something develop between her and her neighbor with the little girl.
There. I've said my piece. Thanks.