A GREAT DELIVERANCE by Elizabeth George

 

Having recently read and reviewed Elizabeth George’s latest book (SOMETHING TO HIDE) and finding it wanting in clarity and far too long, I thought a trip to the past was called for. I was lucky to find a copy of A GREAT DELIVERANCE in our Grand Living Library. This was Ms. George’s breakthrough first Lynley novel and was published in 1988. You will be pleased to note that it is everything the most recent outing is not.  

The title comes from the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. He says to his brothers that he is not there to punish them for selling him, but to “save your lives by a great deliverance.” It is half the length, tightly plotted, and full of spot-on description. We meet the upper-crust Lynley for the first time and he finds that he has been assigned to mentor a struggling working class Sergeant Barbara Havers. She had been demoted to street cop and is now given a final chance to keep her detective’s stripes. As you might expect, Linley and Havers mix as well as oil and water, and this sets up a relationship that will continue to provide contrast for the next thirty years.  As the pair investigate an ax murder in the bucolic Yorkshire countryside, we get a full treatment of Lynley’s previous love affairs and Haver’s own dark family past. The breathtaking climax makes the history behind the brutal killing even more terrible than the crime itself while taking both detectives to the edge of despair.

The descriptions in the early book are tight, colorful, tactile, and often extended by literary references. Take this phrase, “This was no grappling in an Elsinore grave” or this view of Linley. “He examined himself in the mirror at her words, his cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes narrowed against the smoke, part Sam Spade part Algernon Moncrieff.” 

A humorous touch is added with the introduction of the funniest “Ugly American” you may ever see.  Hank Watson, an American dentist and his wife are visiting Britain for a tax write-off dental convention. They clash resoundingly with English society when, at a formal dinner, Hank tries to explain the “queers” in Laguna Beach to Mr. St. James--Linley’s good friend. And witness this description.  Hank’s hand was “fat, slightly sweaty” and “like shaking hands with a warm, uncooked fish.”  You might also appreciate the picture of Barbara Haver’s frumpiness when she puts on a dress. According to George, she resembled a white garbed barrel with legs.”

All in all, if you love Ms. George’s books as much as I do, you might better re-read some of the earlier ones while you await her discovery that bigger is not necessarily better.