Happy Reading

Toni's bookshelf: read

The Godfather of Kathmandu (Sonchai Jitpleecheep, #4)
Ape House
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Operation Napoleon
Walking Dead
The Sentimentalists
The Heretic Queen
The Midnight House
Cross Fire
Peony in Love
Absurdistan
Nefertiti
Finding Nouf: A Novel
City of Veils: A Novel
First Daughter
A Place of Hiding
Amagansett
Peter Pan


Toni Osborne's favorite books »
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Sunday, July 24, 2011

"A Place of Hiding", by Elizabeth George


Book 12 in the Inspector Lynley series

Ms. George has created a tale of human relationships, a story of betrayal and devotion. This mind bending who- done-it investigative suspense brings us to the Channel Island of Guernsey to solve the murder case of millionaire Guy Brouard.

The story commences with China River and her brother Cherokee travelling from California to deliver architectural drawings to Guy Brouard, a rich philanthropist with eccentric ideas. Shortly after their arrival, Brouard is murdered and the police quickly target China as the prime suspect and arrest her. Cherokee goes to London to seek help from one of China’s old schoolmates Deborah St-James. Deborah and her husband agree and leave for Guernsey to see what they can do to prove her innocence. As they poke around, they find the locals are very tight lipped; the skeletons in their past relating to WW11 Nazi occupation always seem to surface. They discover Brouard’s death has a definite link to the past and many could gain from his demise, they feel the police have not expanded their suspect pool enough and are overlooking many important details.

This complex mystery features Deborah and Simon St-James, two supporting characters often found in Ms. George’s earlier novels. Once again, she has sidelined her normally main protagonists, Barbara Havers completely and Thomas Lynley has only a cameo role at the end of the story. I find the author is becoming long winded; too much detail and too many sub-characters can easily be overdone and turn into a drag. The plot is not as convoluted and is far better than the previous novel “A Traitor to Memory” but I find it is still slow moving and plods along at times. Nevertheless I did like this novel and particularly had fun trying to guess who done it…I was totally off the mark till the very end

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