After a brilliant debut (A Great Deliverance) and an almost as dazzling second novel (Payment in Blood), George's third mystery seems more modest—more an homage to the plot intricacies of Christie than a psychological twister in the manner of Rendell—but only for the book's first hundred pages; then the author swings into high gear as she un(Gordian) knots the old school tie. When housemaster John Corntel asks fellow Etonian Thomas Lynley, Scotland Yard CID, to find missing Bredgar Chambers' student Mattie Whately, Lynley somewhat offhandedly agrees, then becomes involved in earnest when the child's naked, tortured body is discovered in a cemetery by old friend Deborah St. James. Accompanied by tough-minded, working-class-reared Sgt. Barbara Havers, Lynley's investigation disgruntles the headmaster; antagonizes the school's principal benefactor, Giles Byrne (his son Brian is an unlikable house prefect); reveals housemaster Corntel's pathetic sexual fantasies; and almost comes to a dead halt when it collides with senior prefect Chas Quilter's loyalty to the school code of honor (resulting in his suicide). Finally, however, a tape recording implicates one student in sexual bullying, and another in blackmail that may have led to Mattie's death. Complications arise when the victim, like student suicide Edward Hus 17 years before, is revealed to have been half-Chinese and adopted. By the time Lynley and Havers sort through school politics, hazing rituals, sixth-form rites of passage, and the sexual mishaps of almost everyone—including the tormented Deborah—the solution is almost exquisite relief from the stress of living. Initially sluggish, in the manner dear to the cozy reader's heart, but George finally offers a piercing study of the education of a gentleman and his responsibilities and valor. Lynley, still lovelorn over Helen, seems emotionally opaque here, though Havers, in her family vise, fairly shimmers. Solid, fine-tuned writing—and a handsome companion piece to its two predecessors.
Pub Date: July 1, 1990
ISBN: 0553384813
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1990
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
