|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Review
'An intelligent book, clipped and precise, every word chosen with care ... a cool, clever book that needs concentration and a sharp brain to unravel ... Along the way to solving the crime we meet some finely drawn characters who emerge as real people with faults and frailties. Ms George is the connoisseur's crime writer. Like fine wine, her words need to be savoured ... Lynley is a policeman with a gentle touch and it is good to have him back on such brilliant form.' -- Sunday Express 'The author writes brilliantly and has an incredible ability to set a scene and create characters you want to know more about.' -- Sun 'Terrific as always - and how great to have Lynley back on the force.' -- Time Out 'Hurrah, another Inspector Lynley ... This is crime writing at its finest. George's books are long, solid and wonderfully crafted; she is a modern Dorothy L Sayers.' -- Saga 'A spellbinding tale of mystery and murder' -- Books Monthly
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
After writing sixteen Inspector Lynley novels, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George has millions of fans waiting for the next one. As USA Today put it, "It's tough to resist George's storytelling, once hooked." With Believing the Lie, she's poised to hook countless more.
Inspector Thomas Lynley is mystified when he's sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the wealthy and influential Bernard Fairclough. The death has been ruled an accidental drowning, and nothing on the surface indicates otherwise. But when Lynley enlists the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, the trio's digging soon reveals that the Fairclough clan is awash in secrets, lies, and motives.
Deborah's investigation of the prime suspect-Bernard's prodigal son Nicholas, a recovering drug addict-leads her to Nicholas's wife, a woman with whom she feels a kinship, a woman as fiercely protective as she is beautiful. Lynley and Simon delve for information from the rest of the family, including the victim's bitter ex-wife and the man he left her for, and Bernard himself. As the investigation escalates, the Fairclough family's veneer cracks, with deception and self-delusion threatening to destroy everyone from the Fairclough patriarch to Tim, the troubled son Ian left behind.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Long Read That Made Me Wonder What the Point Was for 400 Pages,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 112,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Believing the Lie (Hardcover)
"He has set me in dark placesLike the dead of long ago." -- Lamentations 3:6 (NKJV) Nothing pleases me more than to sit down with a long engrossing tale and to be drawn fully into a different world, gaining many insights from the experience . . . and feeling transformed at the end. Having been a fan of the Thomas Lynley novels for some time, I settled in with this book and waited for the magic to arrive. It was a long wait. In the last hundred pages, the book began to take on a more interesting character . . . or I would have rated it at one star. This book needs a strong editor to whack it down to size to fit the story's potential. Without that, you'll spend a lot of time following matters that won't interest you very much and may even make you feel not as good as when you picked up the book. Unless you feel compelled to read every word that Elizabeth George writes, I suggest you skip this book. The next one has to be better. So what's it all about? The book's core concerns the death of Ian Cresswell, who had recently left his wife to live with his male lover. Sir David Hillier "loans" Lynley to a casual acquaintance, Bernard Fairclough, to look into the death in an unofficial way. Thomas asks Simon and Deborah St. James to join him in the sleuthing, and he makes occasional calls on Barbara Havers for research help. It's all a bit awkward because Thomas cannot tell his "guv" and lover, Isabelle Ardley, where he is or what he is doing . . . and Barbara Havers is under her authority. The book has multiple narrators: the deceased; Lynley; Deborah; Barbara; Cresswell's son Tim; a Fairclough daughter; a Fairclough daughter-in-law; and Zed Benjamin, a tabloid reporter. This design allows for lots of subplots such as strains in Lynley's relationship with Isabelle, the St. Jameses dealing with infertility, the difficulties faced by the Cresswell children, trying to find a juicy story for a tabloid and still live with one's conscience, Barbara's battles against orders to improve her appearance, and Barbara's relationship with her neighbors. The story has enough plots and subplots to fill six soap operas, so don't be surprised by anything that comes along. If it hasn't happened yet, it probably will. Overall, the book left me feeling down . . . even though I admired the way that Ms. George ultimately pulled a couple of rabbits out of the hat to make the story more worth the slog. I felt that only the writing about Barbara Havers was really good. If this book had been expanded to just focus on her, it would have been a far, far better work. Much of the rest involved too little character development, too many unlikely circumstances, too predictable development events, and not much encouragement to draw from the human pain displayed.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
get over it Deborah,
By
This review is from: Believing the Lie (Hardcover)
I started to read this book and wondered after 125 pages or so if I was alone in feeling the book poorly done and rambling. Guess not, since many many people seemed to feel the same, having looked at many reviews. Same old rich, entitled and boring people. I have also always wondered what an American who lives in America was doing writing about Brits. Like far too many pop writers today with a "book a year" contract Elizabeth George has run out of ideas and good plots but keeps selling based on past successes. And do women really have to have children to have meaningful lives in the 21st century? Get over it Deborah! I never got far enough (and I am glad I did not) to where Deborah plays a part in the death of another women who is also being made to feel her purpose in life is to reproduce. The former drug addict husband rushing to have her on the floor and telling her after how to position herself so his "swimmers" can do their work was nauseating. When the totally predictable obnoxious 14 year old boy kicks his cousin on the dock I decided enough is enough. Other boring points: Tommy(who calls a grown man that?) and his sleazy affair with his boss, Barbara who cannot be as inept at dressing her self or functioning in society as she is always portrayed,(I was glad she got her teeth fixed.) the predictable tabloid reporter and his dreadfully embarrassing mother..and so on and so on. I like to read in bed and this book is too big and heavy for that!
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspector Lynley Returns After a Lengthy Hiatus,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Believing the Lie (Hardcover)
"Believing the Lie" is the 17th book in Elizabeth George's long-running Inspector Lynley series, and it continues to focus on Tommy Lynley, Earl of Asherton and Detective Inspector at Scotland Yard. One of his superiors asks him to undertake a clandestine investigation into the drowning death of a man living in Cumbria, in England's Lake District, after the man's uncle worries that something underhanded might have occurred in spite of the coroner ruling the death an accident. Tommy doesn't want to take on this task, but he has no choice, and he therefore enlists his friend Simon, a forensic specialist, and Simon's wife Deborah to join him on the trip, while also asking Barbara Havers, his partner at work, to look into some information from London. In the meantime, a young reporter for a scandal sheet has been sent to the same location in order to dig up dirt on the prodigal son and cousin of the dead man, and he is told not to return without a front-page story.... One of the most marvelous things about Elizabeth George's books is that she always takes the time to create and flesh out all of her characters, the individuals involved in the crime being investigated as much as the detective and his cohorts. This makes for lengthy novels (this one is just over 600 pages), but the characters and their complexities are so compelling that it's a joy to commit to the time required to find out all about them. It's possible that one could read any of this series without having read the previous ones, but one would be missing out on the depth and nuances of the main characters' changing relationships to each other and that would be a shame. Very highly recommended.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
