Okay, so Elizabeth George is not British, but she writes about them and keeps a flat in South Kensington, London. When not in London where she stays while doing location research, the Ohio native lives on beautiful Whidbey Island in Washington. Believing the Lie is her 16th novel featuring the 8th Earl of Asherton and New Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Thomas (Tommy) Lynley.
PD James is not just a Brit, she is a Titled Brit: Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL. One of the finest of the many English mystery novelists, the Baroness is now in her 90s and still writing. A complete list of her awards and honors would be too long to include here, but the Wikipedia page linked to her name has them all.
They both appear to be staking out new territory with their latest books. How well either has accomplished that is open for debate. I'll tell you my opinion, if you tell me yours.
The books tonight are:
Believing the Lie Inspector Lynley Series #16, by Elizabeth George, Penguin Group (USA), 01/10/2012, 624 pages, ISBN-13: 9780525952589
and
Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 12/6/2011, 304 pages, ISBN-13: 9780307959850
Have you ever been deceived? Ever believed a lie because it was more convenient than learning the truth? Perhaps a spouse or partner was seeing someone else and you suspected, but didn’t really want to know and so believed his/her excuses and stories? We often believe lies because they are pleasanter than the truth, they confirm an existing belief, or because they disguise a truth that we really don’t want to know.
This life’s five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not thro’, the eye
- William Blake
Believing the Lie deals with lies, as is obvious from the title and the William Blake poem that starts it. But more than just the lies, and those who tell them, Elizabeth George deals with those who hear and believe them. She requires us to examine what is at the root of deception, and looks at those who would demand that others lie in order to protect their own perceptions of reality.
Niamh Cresswell wanted to believe that her husband Ian was a straight man who loved her. For years, as they raised two children, she believed that lie until Ian forced her, and his family, to accept his homosexual nature and the love he felt for another man. It is a confrontation between Ian and his lover, Kaveh, that opens the actual mystery. It was upon Kaveh’s demand that the older man revealed his true self to his family. Having done so, at the cost of his marriage, Ian now wants to take the next step and gain legal recognition for their partnership. Kaveh resists, Ian gets angry and leaves the house to scull on the lake. Coming back to shore he slips on a loose brick of the boathouse dock, falls, hits his head and dies.
Ian’s uncle is Bernard Fairclough, first Baron of Ireleth, in the county of Cumbria, President of Fairclough Industries and married to the grand daughter of the founder. Bernard Cutter took her name upon their marriage, and assumed eventual control of the daily operations of the lavatory manufacturer. His wife Valerie retained her inherited position of Chairman of the Board of Directors and hence overall control. Ian was being groomed to take over the family firm by his uncle who only had one son, Nicholas, a recovering drug addict newly returned home with his Argentinian wife, and two daughters, Manette and Mignon, none of whom appeared ready to give him grandchildren.
Claiming that he suspects his nephew’s death was not the accident it appeared, Fairclough persuades Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier to send Thomas Lynley to Cumbria to quietly investigate the drowning. DI Lynley is sworn to secrecy and firmly told that there was to be no official Scotland Yard involvement. His boss, Acting Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery, with whom he was having a clandestine affair, was not to be told anything by Lynley. Hillier would handle her.
Meanwhile, a news tabloid reporter is sniffing around Cumbria for a story that would appeal to readers looking for sex and sensationalism.
Lynley recruits his close friends, forensic analyst Simon St. James, and St. James' photographer wife Deborah, to accompany him in this undercover operation in Cumbria. The more they investigate in that fog shrouded district, the more stories are slowly, partially revealed.
In London, DS Barbara Havers, in between complying with Ardery's "suggestion" that she markedly improve her appearance, has been doing research into the Fairclough family business. Sworn to secrecy by Lynley, she is put in the position of having to hide her activity from their boss, Isabelle Ardery. Barbara is also trying to balance her friendship with her neighbor Taymullah Azhar with that of his partner Angelina Upman, the mother of Haddiyah.
About halfway through this 624 page book the term "soap opera" popped out of nowhere into my head. It seemed as if what I was reading more appropriately belonged on All My Children, or one of those daytime talk programs about unimaginable family interactions. It didn’t seem like I was reading a murder mystery as much as a series of melodramas, with a mini mystery for each character. Wondering how much more of this I could take, I soldiered on, having already filled my monthly quota of books that I hadn’t finished.
I am glad I did. There are backstories galore in this book. There are multiple mysteries involved with just about all of the characters. And throughout the novel is the choice to look “thro’” the eye or to only "see" with it and believe the lie. And there are a lot of lies.
My first draft of this review suggested that Elizabeth George needed a better editor. Then I realized that perhaps she just needed a better reader. This is not the typical serial murderer mystery that we are used to seeing Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers solve. It has a great deal more depth and a lot less mystery. I don't know whether she is attempting to expand the mystery genre or is moving into literary fiction.
Either way, I'm not sure that she needed all of the characters to be so fully developed at the expense of a swiftly moving plot. But if she hadn’t fully developed each character, it wouldn’t be an Elizabeth George novel. If you are looking for a big novel to get lost in and roam about in, this should satisfy you. But don’t be surprised when she asks you to wonder about more than simply “who done it.” Be ready to ponder the bigger questions about lies. Who really creates them? Does all of the responsibility rest with the teller, or must some be shared by the believer?
It amazes me how publishers are willing to print just about anything written by a best selling author. And apparently, in the case of
Death Comes to Pemberley, without even bothering to edit it. Although it's doubtful that an editor could have saved this silly piece of something, I would have felt better if they had at least tried.
According to the
New York Times:
The story is set in 1803, six years after “Pride and Prejudice” was finished (though it wasn’t published until 1813) and presumably when the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy took place. They have two young sons now, and the arrival of a third child is shortly to be announced. But their tranquillity is interrupted one wet and windy evening when an unexpected carriage comes rocketing up the drive.
Inside is Elizabeth’s airhead sister Lydia, the one who eloped with the charming but unreliable George Wickham, screaming that her husband is dead. Actually he isn’t, though many, including Darcy, for whom Wickham is a constant source of embarrassment and irritation, might wish he were. A search party discovers Wickham in the woods, drunk and bloodstained, beside the body of his best friend, Captain Denny, and he babbles what sounds like a confession. But is Wickham, although a deadbeat and a serial seducer of young women, really a murderer? Even Darcy can’t quite believe that of him.
Sounds appealing, doesn't it? After reading the book I looked at the professional reviews and wondered if I could get a copy of the novel they were raving about. Because I did not recognize this as the one reviewed by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times. I found little to praise and much to bemoan. What they may not have noticed is that if an editor had been found to cut much of the repetition and pointless exposition this book could possibly have become a charming novella and homage to Jane Austen. It could not have gotten any worse. As it stands now, it is difficult to read and even more difficult to believe.
Starting with Elizabeth Darcy nee Bennet. What happened to the overly confident, intelligent, insightful heroine who found “delight in the absurd”? How did she become the woman who meekly stood by and allowed the housekeeper to order her about in the presence of her guests as if she were Daphne du Maurier’s unnamed narrator in Rebecca?
“I will sit with Mrs. Wickham until Dr. McFee arrives, madam. I expect he will give her something to calm her and make her sleep. I suggest that you and Mrs. Bingley go back to the music room to wait; you will be comfortable there and the fire has been made up. Stoughton will stay at the door and keep watch, and he will let you and Mrs. Bingley know as soon as the chaise comes into sight. And if Mr. Wickham and Captain Denny are discovered on the road, there will be room in the chaise for the whole party, although it will not perhaps be the most comfortable of journeys. I expect the gentlemen will need something hot to eat when they do return, but I doubt, madam, whether Mr. Wickham and Captain Denny will wish to stay for refreshments. Once Mr. Wickham knows that his wife is safe, he and his friend will surely want to continue their journey. I think Pratt said that they were on their way to the King’s Arms at Lambton.”
This is simply wrong. Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet would have been telling the housekeeper what to do and when and how to do it. The character created by PD James wonders if the housekeeper “was being deliberately reassuring.” She had been Mrs. Darcy for six years, surely a woman of Elizabeth’s intelligence would have learned how to order a household by now and would not have tolerated being treated like a child.
Who is this person with Elizabeth Darcy’s name? She appears as nothing but a foil for the other characters and is perhaps the most passive living individual in the novel.
On the morning after a dead body is found in the woods of Pemberley, Darcy and Elizabeth both feel the need to address the servants. PD James apparently thinks it is important for us to know this and to remember it as she repeats it four or five times, even having Darcy tell Elizabeth twice in the same paragraph:
...love, I think it is time for us to speak to the staff, both the indoor servants and those who may be working in the house. Mrs. Reynolds and Stoughton will have told them only that there has been an accident and the ball has been cancelled, and there will be considerable alarm and anxiety. I will ring for Mrs. Reynolds now and say that we will come down to speak to them in the servants’ hall …
I refuse to believe that in
any era people spoke to each other this way. And why did they not just go downstairs and speak to the servants? The much heralded "talk" reveals nothing that had not already been discussed and provides no illumination of either the characters or the action. The elevation of mundane information is repeated throughout the novel, seemingly without reason.
Like the candles. Yes, candles. The body of Captain Denny is placed on the table of the gunroom. When the authorities arrive at Pemberley, they are taken to view it. But first we must detour into a discussion of candles. Three pages of talk about how many candles they need, what kind of candles they are, how many are already in the gunroom (fourteen, we are told) and if the use of dining room candles will upset the housekeeper and the butler (?!?). I wondered whether the number and type of candles was a red herring placed in the path of the solution to the mystery or if it was simply James’ way of reminding us ignorant readers of the the 21st century that there was no electricity in 1803 at Pemberley. I believe it to be the later. Or perhaps she had a minimum word quota to meet.
This repetition continues throughout the novel, as scenes and activities are described by multiple people with minor differences between the accounts. Testimony given to the magistrate is repeated at the inquest, and then again at the trial. Really, we need to hear three times that the horses did not want to enter the woods?
And there is way too much of the amateurish “do remind me” and “do you remember when” manner of adding details from the original Pride and Prejudice to this story. As if anyone other than a die-hard Jane Austen fan would be reading Death Comes to Pemberley. And if someone was unfamiliar with that novel, these trips down memory lane would hardly enlighten them. Either way, it would cause the action to slow, if there was any action to speak of. Which there really isn't.
The mystery itself is surprisingly weak, especially coming from PD James. Much as I love mysteries, I don't like being able to figure them out in the first few chapters. There were times, I confess, that I found myself wondering who really wrote this book. Was it a hoax, or was a ghost being overly helpful? And really, what book were those professional critics reading?
One out of two isn't bad, I guess. I can freely recommend Believing the Lie to those who want more and less than a standard mystery. People who like exploring character and motivation may enjoy it more than those who love straight mysteries.
And I can strongly recommend that those who have not yet spent the money on Death Comes to Pemberley to not spend it. Do not check it out of the library. Do not download the sample to your nook or kindle. (Unless your user name is Ellid and you are planning a diary on fan-fiction for your weekly series.)
If you love Jane Austen's people, read her books. There are multiple online sources for free downloads or use your local library.
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