Like Alison Lurie's serious novel, Foreign Affairs, which I wrote about recently on Blogcritics, Elizabeth George is an American woman in London. Lurie, however, made her character an American professor visiting London and visited her novel with the sights and sounds of that city and the British culture. We learn that she is an anglophile and that British and American cultures may be similar but are surely not identical. We learn of people rather than lurid crimes and cop ways.
Elizabeth George makes her lead character, the Scotland Yard investigator, Detective Constable Barbara Havers, a bit of a character but a brilliant detective. Sound familiar? She has a superior officer she adores who turns out to be an Earl who drives a Bentley. There is a Black man from Brixton (not the best part of London) on the force who is sort of, almost, her partner and they all fight the stupidity of the martinet above them who meddles and manipulates.
I read, some time ago, a book on writing successful mysteries. It made them sound easy and governed by formula. It appears true. However, knowing the formula and being able to write a book by it are horses of a different color. There may be a formula but few seem able to follow it and still make magic.
There is also the ethical part of this. Do readers who buy serial killer mysteries send a message that the world is fascinated by their violent perversions? Perhaps. Would it change them if the books did not get published and sold so well? Probably not. What about the mass murderers who just seem berserkers - the shooters of grade schools and of post offices, the mad bomber of Oklahoma City? Should a whole industry develop from the stories of their crimes?
So here we are in a London of the modern day with a detailed description of the workaday and the shabby underside worlds. The book jacket even says Ms. George lives in London and Huntington Beach, California. I have been to Huntington Beach so, had she written of it, I would have been able to judge better but would have been less interested. Her London sounds like the London we have read about with the addition of 21st-century anomie, violence and tension. And the center of the story remains New Scotland Yard and its hierarchy, and inner tensions.
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.