Believing the Lie – A Review
Title: Believing the Lie
Author: Elizabeth George
Publisher: Dutton, a member of Penguin group
Genre: mystery
Length: 610 pages
Dutton Books, to my surprise and excitement, kindly provided me with a copy of Believing the Lie, Inspector Lynley’s 17th book appearance, just weeks before its official release date. Despite this book being number seventeen in a series, and having never read any of George’s previous work, I often wondered which characters were reoccurring ones and which were unique to this title. The work and the character development was so seamless, this was unclear until nearly toward the end.
“[…] Darling, secrets and silence caused all of this. Lies caused this,” Inspector Lynley summarizes the novel of which he is supposedly the star. It is refreshing to read a crime writer who gives you such a large cast of characters in such detail, its surprising to find that the lead inspector is more like the wood frame that holds a canvas together than the paint that creates the work of art itself. He is ever in the middle of the action, but rarely the focus, he merely serves as the reason for the story’s existence in the first place.
George writes human tension beautifully. More than a typical mystery, George has written a well crafted drama involving social issues surrounding homosexuals, transsexuals, and the families who love but fail to understand them. During all this family drama, international culture issues, marital affairs, and even a child pornography ring, the biggest truth to be revealed of this murder mystery, is whether there has even been a murder at all.
Typically, when I read mysteries I take the cozy, less than 200 page ones for what I call “bubble bath books,” something I can read in one sitting in the tub. As much as I love those (my cotton candy for the soul), I say with the highest compliment intended, George does not write bubble bath mysteries. And quite different from those sorts of books, this one left me wondering: What Next?
Anakalian Whims 