This Body of Death, Elizabeth George, Harper, $28.99.
While Lynley is partnered with Ardery in this outing, and Havers with Nkata, everything else is as it should be. Nkata is an established enough character (who’s been working with Barbara since Lynley’s absence in any case) that it’s not too jarring, and the tension that’s established through Havers wanting to work with Lynley again adds some extra depth to the book.
There are very few authors who could write a 689 page book and actually make me want to read it, but Elizabeth George is one of them. The way she blends her characters, the way she tells a complicated story, all make me return to her books again and again. There’s no better writer on the planet at explicating motive, and not just the motives of the criminals involved, but the motives of the central characters, who any regular reader has by this time come to regard with a great deal of affection. While I’m a big Lynley fan myself, there are those who would like to give him "a poke in the snoot" (to quote my husband about Lord Peter Wimsey) but I’ve found few if any readers who don’t possess an unabashed affection for Barbara Havers, surely one of the greatest characters in contemporary mystery fiction.
This novel also has a wonderful and complex story with some twists I didn’t see coming (and one I did). It’s set up in alternating narratives, one a psychological report of three troubled boys who abduct a baby, and the other main story involving a missing woman, her boyfriend back in the New Forest, and her eventual corpse in a London cemetery. One of the things George is brilliant at is getting the reader to know and like the victim, making the regret at the death even greater and more resonant. As the story of the dead woman, Jemima Hastings, is unraveled, it becomes clear that she’d left her boyfriend, Gordon Jossie, in a mysterious hurry. Jossie is a roofing thatcher working in the New Forest (Google thatched roofs to have a look at these beauties) and both Jemima’s brother and her best friend, Meredith, feel there’s something off about him. Added to the mix is Gordon’s new girlfriend, Gina, and the group of people that Jemima apparently knew in London.
Complicating matters is Superintendent Ardery’s refusal or unwillingness to work with the strengths of the members of her team, instead making sometimes arbitrary and sometimes just plain wrong decisions that get her into all sorts of trouble. Lynley’s way of smoothing the waters in a very back of the scenes manner goes a long way toward the eventual solving of the crime, as does Havers’ pure doggedness and good instincts. While I do feel that, atmosphere or no, there were some parts of the story that could have been tightened up or edited more closely, the main story is a strong one, and it’s great to feel the old dark Elizabeth George magic back at work once again. By the end of the book, I couldn’t look away or stop reading, and I was purely surprised by one of the twists, though George has set her story so carefully I guess I shouldn’t have been.
She seems to be mellowing a bit as she leaves at least two of the characters on the verge of an actual happy ending, and she leaves Lynley now looking forward instead of backward, which is progress. And Havers? She has a new skirt to add to her wardrobe, but I’m not so sure that her makeover will go any farther than that. I’m certainly more than willing to pick up the next book in order to find out.
Blood Harvest, S.J. Bolton, Harper, $25.99.
S.J. doesn’t write a series, but, like many good writers, she is deeply interested in recurring themes and images. Blood Harvest, her latest, begins with a typical scene in which a landslide in the muddy ground of an isolated English churchyard reveals a few too many corpses. In many way it’s a typical motif in Bolton’s vision of the neo-Gothic, bracingly visceral, yet symbolic of the refusal of old sins and secrets to remain hidden, no matter how deeply buried. And when the dead return they always seem to want to take the living with them.
Bolton excels in her vivid portrayal of normal lives threatened by a looming, unnerving darkness, an evil which comes not so much from the creepy settings but from the hearts of the characters who inhabit them. In Blood Harvest a new family, the Fletchers, have moved into the clannish and tradition bound village of Heptonclough, and immediately find their young children menaced by mysterious and malevolent forces. Arrayed against the dark side is another newcomer, the Vicar, Harry Laycock, representing the traditional religious bulwark against the dark side, assisted by Evi Oliver, practitioner of the more modern technique of psychiatry. Evi is a classic Bolton heroine, sharp and acerbic, physically and mentally wounded, very secretly longing for meaningful human contact yet stubbornly avoiding it. There’s also the ancient defense mechanism of the family which, as the book shows with great power, can be as great a force for horror as for joy.
Another major ingredient in the Bolton recipe is the skillful addition of British folklore and custom. There are plenty of disturbing traditions in Heptonclough and even a ruined church haunted by malevolent forces. Since The Hound of the Baskervilles mystery protagonists and readers have been presented with paradoxes that push rationality to the limits and seem to have only supernatural explanations. Like the classic English masters, Bolton expertly toys with our expectations, and just when we think we have things figured out, pulls the rug from under us. The term "Gothic" may seem unappealingly dusty and even corny, but Blood Harvest is skillfully grounded in the here and now, so full of vivid characterization, precisely sketched settings, evocative prose and skillfully turned plot that it grabs the reader as firmly as any thriller. The resonance of Bolton’s work lingers far longer however, and her tale will haunt you as effectively as any spirit. (Jamie)
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