Elizabeth George (1) (1949–)

Angelina Upman has returned to Taymullah Azhar and his daughter Hadiyyah. Barbara Havers has been instructed by her supervisor Isabelle Avery to dress professionally, get her hair professionally cut, and have her teeth fixed. She tries, but when Angelina disappears with their daughter, Barbara despairs and goes back to her old ways in her quest to help Azar find his daughter. Unfortunately, he is not named on her birth certificate so has no legal claim to her. They hire an English private investigator to find out where she was taken. He tells them that he cannot locate the child. Several months later it becomes known that Hadiyyah has been kidnapped from a market square in a small Italian town. Barbara goes rouge to try to find Hadiyyah for Azhar, using her warrant card to intimidate the private investigator and his helpers and becoming a source for a tabloid reporter (The Source) in order to make things happen, all the while lying to her supervisors about what she is doing. She gets Inspector Lynley sent to Italy to serve as liaison to the bereft father and mother. Lynley ends up working with Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco to locate the child. However all is not over, when Angelina, now pregnant with her new lover's child, becomes ill and dies. The last half of the book follows Havers' investigation of the kidnapping and the killing of Angelina.… (more)

Inspector Lynley is asked by Chief Superintendent David Hillier to go to the Lake District in Cumbria to investigate the drowning of Ian Cresswell under the radar. Hillier has been asked to send someone to investigate by Bernard Fairclough, a wealthy manufacturer, and Cresswell's uncle. Cresswell has divorced his wife to have a relationship with another man, Kaveh Mehran. His wife, Niamh, has left he and Kaveh to raise their two children, Tim and Gracie. Lynley asks Simon and Deborah St. James to assist him in some incognito investigation. When they get to Cumbria, Lynley and St. James go to the Fairclough's boat house to investigate whether this was an accident or murder. The coroner there has already ruled it an accident. Deborah helps by meeting with Nicholas Fairclough, Bernard's son, and his wife Alatea from Argentina. Nick had been a drug addict until he met and married Alatea in Utah. Alatea is secretly arranging for surrogacy so she and Nick can have a child. Lynley asks Barbara Havers to investigate certain members of this family in London on the down-low. Deborah investigates this that has no relation to Ian Cresswell's death, with disastrous results. Meanwhile, Zed Benjamin, a tabloid reporter with The Source, is there trying to dig up tabloid worthy information about them. In this book there are plenty of secrets, lies, and motives to go around. Bernard Fairclough is hiding something, as is Kaveh Mehran, Tim Fairclough, Alatea, Mignon Fairclough (Nick's sister), and the Fairclough's mother, who says she is the one who found the body in the boat house. Sister Manette is trying to get Tim and Gracie into a stable family situation. Lynley is trying to decide about his relationship with Superindent Isabelle Ardery. Barbara Havers is trying to please Arderly by getting her teeth fixed, her hair cut, and her clothes upgraded with the help of Angelina, Taymullah Azar's returned lover and mother of his daughter, Hadiyyah. There is even deception here.… (more)

Isabelle Ardery manages to get Inspector Lynley back to the New Scotland Yard, by asking him to mentor her in her tryout for Superintendent. He has been gone for 5 months, trying to recover from the untimely death of his pregnant wife Helen by a random shooting. The novel covers two seemingly unrelated murders, the child killers of 2-year-old John Dressel, and the murder of Jemima Hastings. When she is found in an old cemetery, killed by a strange tool embedded in her neck, Barbara Havers, Winston Nkata, Hale, and Stewart's team is tasked with finding the killer, supervised and directed by Isabelle. Jemima has recently left her 2-year relationship with Gordon Jossie, a roof thatcher. She lived with him in a cottage on some land they obtained in the New Forest area of Hampshire which allows the free range of ponies. Her brother Rob Hastings, who is not a physically attractive man, but a very committed and nice one, is one of the people tasked with watching over and caring for the ponies and the land. Meredith was Jemima's best friend for many years until they had a falling out over Jemima's need for a man. She decides to bake Jemima a cake for their joint birthday and begins a quest to deliver it to her, when she finds that Jemima has left for London. Meredith believes in going without a man after her disastrous affair with a married man in London resulting in a pregnancy and birth of Cammie her now 6-year-old daughter. The story ranges from chapters that describe the abduction and murder of John Dressel along with the fate of the three 10 and 11-year-old boys responsible, to the chapters that follow along the story of the murder, and subsequent solving of Jemima Hastings' murder and why it happened. It all begins when Jemima abruptly leaves her 2-year relationship with Gordon Jossie and goes to London. Then the story ranges from London, the site of the murder, and Hampshire where Jemima lived with her lover and opened the Cupcake Queen shop before leaving. I am not a fan of the budding relationship between Lynley and Isabelle, a woman teetering on the brink of becoming an alcoholic. Then there is also the interplay between Barbara Havers and her neighbors, Taymullah Azah and his daughter Hadiyyah. The story is based upon the 1993 murder and abduction of the two-year-old James Bulger from the New Strand Shopping Center in Bootle, Liverpool, by two ten-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who served 10 years and then were given new names and jobs and recycled into the community. Elizabeth George is seemingly asking if people can be rehabilitated and returned with a new name and profession into a community unaware of their past and are boys who grew up bullied and abused the only ones to blame for their actions since "Abused children carry abuse forward through time."… (more)