Review: Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George (Hodder and Stoughton)

Elizabeth George’s popular Inspector Lynley mysteries (in book and on the box) have passed me by, so I had some catching up to do when presented with over 700 pages of the latest Lynley whodunit.

For those not in the know, Lynley is a likeable, well-to-do, manners-maketh-man, gentleman detective.

Sadly, he and his 1948 Healey Elliott, are not the sorts one meets anymore. More’s the pity.

Then there’s Barbara Havers. At times Lynley’s professional partner, in solving crimes, at times not. Havers is constantly dishevelled, in need of a bath and clean clothes, a chain smoker, with a heart of gold and a smell pervading every page.

Her shaved head (another story), covered by a selection of cheapo knitted hats, and her selection of stained T-shirts sporting decidedly dodgy motifs, round off a woman “apocalyptic” in style.

Lynley and Havers. Certainly the odd couple.

Tragedy has dogged Thomas Lynley’s life and it is only now, after a doomed affair with a superior officer, that he is putting a toe back into dating waters – gently pursuing Kickarse Electra aka Daidre Trahair, a competitive roller skater. Yes, I know... but stay with me.

Havers has a soft spot for Taymullah Azhar, her Pakistani microbiologist neighbour.

So when he tells her that his young daughter, Hadiyyah, has been kidnapped, Havers enters the fray, like a bat out of hell.

The plot thickens by leaps, much of it taking place in Tuscany where Lynley encounters a certain chief inspector, Salvatore lo Bianco, another crime fighter of some substance.

Like Lynley and Havers, Lo Bianco is determined to solve the kidnapping of this British child, but the local “public minister and magistrate”, Piero Fanucci, is a despot of such arrogance and contrariness, it is not surprising that he is: “cursed with warts that exploded from his face and in possession of a sixth finger on his right hand”. Serves him right.

Each character is trying to solve the kidnapping of young Hadiyyah and it is a lengthy solving, full of riddles, red herrings, death, deceit and dubious characters, including, for good measure, a creepy computer hacker and a mad nun.

Elizabeth George is a highly acclaimed writer, skilled in creating plots where, mostly likeable, but dysfunctional, characters are up against a slew of fascinating difficulties.

But, it has to be said, she also has a bent towards heavily descriptive turns of phrase.

The latter is either going to delight or annoy. And, the fact that the Italian protagonists often speak in Italian – which is sometimes easy enough to get the gist of and sometimes not – may well also annoy.

Myself, I found much of her descriptive prose a delight, if sometimes a little long-winded.

By the finale I felt as though Lynley and Havers had become comrades – even though I still wanted to give Havers a good scrub.