Love + Jealousy + Murder = A Very Complex Investigation

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	• Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley) Elizabeth George Bantam, 2007 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Love + Jealousy + Murder = A Very Complex Investigation

Elizabeth George takes the cool Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley and turns his world upside down. For unknown and possibly public relations reasons, Scotland Yard sends Lynley outside of his jurisdiction to Scotland to take over an investigation after a fetching playwright is found murdered in her bed.

But, the guest in the adjoining room is Lynley's much beloved Lady Helen Clyde. To Lynley's chagrin, it turns out that Lady Helen has been sharing her boudoir. Naturally, she must be interrogated. How will Lynley bear up?

Lynley is clearly distraught by dealing with the situation and is soon making big mistakes. How will that affect the investigation? Well, it's not good . . . but fortunately Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers is on duty with Lynley.

Although this is a mystery, the book succeeds more as an investigation into the English class system and its weaknesses. With Barbara Havers standing in for every person in her role as skeptical seeker after truth, we see the rotten underpinnings of having a hereditary elite in place. How far has the rot spread? Well, you'll just have to read the book to find out.

The mystery itself takes some tangled turns that will provide much entertainment.

I graded the book down a bit. Some scenes didn't resonate with my impressions of this character from the last book. I thought that Ms. George had Lynley's head spinning a bit more than seems likely from what we learned about him in A Great Deliverance.

The book is a very important one in the series though. Frequent references in future books are made to the events in this one. You will enrich your enjoyment of future books if you read Payment in Blood.

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Repeat reading

Rereading this book after several years. Still a great book and much better than the TV version.

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Just as Good as Her First Book

Payment in Blood is my 2nd Elizabeth George book but certainly not my last. Besides being a good mystery story, it is also the continuation of Detective Lynley & Havers personal life. While her first novel, A Great Deliverance, focused on the prickly but determined Barbara Havers, this second novel is all about the charming but no less complex partner, Thomas Lynley.

This murder mystery is set in a cold, gray, chilly castle in Scotland where a group of actors and their director are staying so they can work on a play written by the talented writer Joy Sinclair. Unfortunately, Ms. Sinclair is murdered on the very first night of their arrival to the remote castle. A dagger right through her neck, ugh. Scotland Yard is called and all the suspects are locked in a room while Lynley & Havers along with forensic scientist, Simon St. Allcourt gather clues.

What made this story so interesting was the dilema that Detective Lynley faces when it appears that his good friend (aka love interest) Helen Clyde is in the room with the only access to the victim. Is she the killer? Is it the man that she is sleeping with who happens to be the murder victim's cousin. Lynley is conflicted by the desire to protect Helen but also by a burning jealousy to blame her boyfriend. In the pursuit of justice, the lines are a little blurred when Lynley allows this jealousy to get the best of him when he goes after the boyfriend with a vengeance. Is he on the right trail....read Payment in Blood to find out. I can't wait to read her next novel.

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Payment In Blood

I have not long been a reader of Elizabeth George but in short time I have read every one of her books. I so highly recommend her that I would like to take an ad out for the best writer, of mystery fiction, I've read. I don't care which book you pick up, it will be excellent. And, each book has a surprise ending. I challenge anyone to know what will eventually happen anywhere from page one to 7/8th the way through! No stop, erudite entertainment.

Masterful

EG's eye for detail is superb and she deftly weaves a plot of byzantine intricacy against a background of wonderful Scottish scenery and thespian intrigue. So accurate is her narrative that one forgets that it is fiction, and picks up the occasional reference that goes astray - e.g. the Royal Scottish Police helicopter, but that it is truly nit picking. This is a an engaging read that fully entertains and leaves me looking for the next one.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

The career of playwright Joy Sinclair comes to an abrupt end on an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands when someone drives an eighteen-inch dirk through her neck. Called upon to investigate the case in a country where they have virtually no authority, aristocratic Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, grapple for both a motive and a murderer. Emotions run deep in this highly charged drama, for the list of suspects soon includes Britain?s foremost actress, its most successful theatrical producer, and the woman Lynley loves. He and Havers must tread carefully through the complicated terrain of human relationships while they work to solve a case rooted in the darkest corners of the past and the unexplored regions of the human heart.

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