A Great Deliverance Book Details
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Bantam Books; Reprint edition (May 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0553384791
ISBN-13: 978-0553384796
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale's lush green valleys. Three hundred years ago, as legend goes, the frightened Yorkshire villagers smothered a crying babe in Keldale Abbey, where they'd hidden to escape the ravages of Cromwell's raiders.
Now into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an axe in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry."
Yet as Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale's dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a shattering series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley—and in their own lives as well.
A Great Deliverance Book Review
I've read several of the Lynley/Havers mysteries already, and have loved every one of them. But I've never read this, the first book in the series. Now I have, and I only wish I'd read this one before all the others. I'd never known how Lynley & Havers got together in the first place, or of the details of Lynley's friendship with St. James and his wife, along with Lady Helen. Now that I'm aware, I'll probably go back and re-read those books in the series that I've already read to get a new perspective on the characters.
Now, as to the plot all I can say is, "wow". The same for the writing. Most British mysteries seem to me to be basically the same a body is found in a small, quaint English village, or sometimes in a city such as London, and the sleuth whether it's a local constable, a Scotland Yard person, or someone like the redoubtable Miss Marple comes in and solves the crime. Along the way, we learn a little bit about the eccentricities of the local population. The basic story is much the same here but Ms. George fleshes the characters out, and makes them appear three-dimensional and gives us incredible, breath-taking descriptions of the local scenery. Not only that, but her eventual resolution of the story - the reason for the crime, and its effect on both the main and secondary characters is so intensely real that I wanted this book to continue on after its ending. With Lynley & Havers, that will be possible by reading the other books in the series, but for the other characters, that probably won't be. And I'd like to have seen what happened to them a few weeks or months (or even years) down the road. I found myself hoping that things would work out for all of them. I'm hoping Ms. George will refer back to them in her future novels even if it's only a few lines; I'd like to know how they're doing.
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