I think this would have been the strongest Lynley mystery yet since the first, A Great Deliverance, were it not for one major flaw. While this didn't move me to tears as that first in the series did, this one feels all more of a piece than any of the prior George books. While in others the subplots concerning Havers' and Lynley's personal lives felt intrusive, in this one I feel for the first time since the first book George struck a good balance. Havers' dilemma with her mother, whose dementia requires constant care, and Lynley's continuing courtship of Helen doesn't feel like a distraction here, but complimentary in their themes to the murder mystery.
The crux of this novel, even more than prior mysteries, is very centered on the victim, Elena Weaver, and her various identities and relationships: as a deaf woman who resists attempts to define her in such terms, as the daughter of an ambitious Cambridge don and as a student who has lodged a complaint of sexual harassment against a lothario professor. George is adept not just at tossing out red herrings and feints, but in weaving together psychological depth into characters and their motivations. This is the second time I've read this one. I didn't remember the murderer. I think because George isn't so jaw-dropping flashy in her resolutions as a Christie so some ultimate twist lodges it in your brain. But I remembered things like her portrait of an artist whose wellspring of inspiration had dried, the deaf student activist who made the distinction between "deaf" (a disability) and "Deaf" (a culture) the picture of academic politics, the depiction of the incredible damage murder leaves behind and even Helen's sister, Penelope, struggling to come back to herself while her husband is determined to have her define herself as his wife and a mother.
So this definitely is one Elizabeth George book that lingers in memory years afterwards. I wouldn't quite put George up there with the very best of the mystery genre when I compare her books to the masterpieces of Christie, Tey, and Sayers, but her novels are far ahead in writing style, solid plotting and psychological depth from what you can usually find in the mystery aisle, and anyone still writing mysteries today who I've tried. I certainly care a lot more about George's recurring detectives Havers and Lynley than say Adam Dagliesh of PD James.
Thus until almost the end reading this novel, I thought I'd probably give this a top rating. So what leads me to dock it a star? Quite simply, George cheats. The resolution we get at the end just doesn't fit with what she gives us at the beginning. If this weren't so strong in other ways, I'd be tempted to lower the boom and rank this even lower, were it not so well-written and emotionally moving.
