Customer Reviews

Believing the Lie

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"He has set me in dark places
Like 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.

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!

"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.

I was excited so see there was a new Inspector Lynley. I have read all the previous in the series and would recommend all of them. Loved the characters and the story lines. This one "Believing the Lie" is 600 pages of nothing. I kept reading and expecting that it would get better but it never did. It got more and more confused with more and more unlikable characters so that I could hardly wait for it to end. I was so disappointed with this book that I will probably not read another if there is one.

This book lacked direction. While it included the usual characters, it had so many sub-plots and other characters that it detracted from the story. Having read many of Elizabeth George's book, this one was the least enjoyable. Seemed a bit tabloidy.

Elizabeth George is my favorite author , I have read all of her Thomas Lindley series, the last one was great but this one took me two months to read, it was soo pointless until the last 100 pages, 600 pages of ramblings, the plot was also weak, I had figured it out before the last 100 pages. I expect I will read her next one and hopefully it will be better.

This book is a mess. There are tangled plot lines (and believe me in 600 pages things can get very tangled, unsatisfying characters and the need for a good editor. I have read all of George's books and have wavered over the past couple - this has totally turned me off. I simply won't bother when the next one comes out. Worst of all - that WHINEY Deborah St. James is back still moaning about having no kid around. I wanted to scream at her to go to China for a baby and hopefully stay there. She has pretty well destroyed Barbara Havers (who if George had any guts would make her gay) - the obsession with the neighbours is really getting stale.

So George has finally beaten me. One less fan. From reviews I have read on amazon and other sites, I am not alone. I wish I had waited for the paperback. It's very heavy in hardcover - making it difficult to toss out the window.

Delivery was on time and in good condition. It was as advertised. Amazon gave good service. I have no complaints at all.

Boring, boring, long, long, long...Everything are so predictable. The first books presenting the building relationship between Lynley and Havers were the best. After that, the love between Thomas and Helen, contraception problem between Simon and Deborah, bla, bla, bla, Helen dies anf after... nothing. I am still waiting for a real story not a melting pot of soap opera TV shows.
P.S. (Excuse me for my english writing, I am a french canadian)

I have only read a couple of her books in the past and stopped awhile back but I was keeping an eye out thankfully because this book caught my attention and then I read it. To me this is the best book in the series.