Book Review: Something to Hide by Elisabeth George

 

Elizabeth George’s Something to Hide comes in at almost 700 pages and literally weighs over two pounds. (I put it on a scale.)  

She takes a full 100 pages to lay out four apparently separate background threads. There is a shadowy female health clinic that may or may not be involved with participating in female genital mutilation or fighting against it. There is another family with sexual and relationship issues that spring from their valiant efforts to minister to the needs of their severely handicapped daughter. There is a Nigerian family with a creepy violence prone bigamous father, a sneaky mother, an eight year old daughter, who for somewhat different reasons the parents would like to have “cut” in order to insure that she will make a good wife, and a modern son with a modern girl friend who are having none of any of it. Around the edges also is a police investigation targeting the shadowy clinic.  

Finally, a black female detective who is connected to that clinic, goes into a coma and dies. The autopsy reveals that she has been a murder victim and only then do we get a sense that this is a "Lynley" novel.  Acting Inspector Lynley, Barbara Havers, and Winston Ncata enter the story as the investigating officers. For the next six hundred pages you creep through the investigation with them and, as is normal in this kind of novel, while they find the linkages that draw the complicated plot together.  More disconcerting is that the already multi-layered story is not helped by the side trips into Lynley’s own new love interest and Barbara Havers lack of any love interest.

I wish I could recommend this book, because the central theme of the heinous practice of genital mutilation of young girls begs for more attention. Unfortunately, the slow start hangs on into the rest of the book.  It just seems to move at a glacial pace. I sometimes wonder why perfectly good successful writers feel the need to enter the “Who can write the longest book?” competition against heavyweights like Melville and Dostoyevsky. Ms. George tries, but she loses this time.