CBR 11 Bingo – And So It Begins
This is the first book of the Inspecter Lynley series by the writer Elizabeth George. I don’t know this series very much except that there’s something like twenty of these books (for a series that’s about 30 years old all told) and that each of the books is pretty hefty. We begin with the introduction of our two primary characters — Havers, a down and out patrol officer trying to win her way back onto CID after her general anti-social attitude and prejudice against her has moved her out of the good graces and Lynley, an educated, monied aristocratic who happens to be a higher up in the police force/CID.
The mystery is about an older, angry religious man who is beheaded alongside his dog. His cloistered daughter, a houseworker at the farm this all takes places at, is found with an ax and stating “I did it” over and over.
The case seems open and shut to the local Yorkshire police, but a few lingering details stick out as curious and inconsistent to the detectives, namely that the dog has been treated in a way that does not clearly indicate that the daughter is responsible.
The novel spends a long, slow, meandering time investigating the crime, filling in the background details of the detectives, the principle suspects, the other figures, and the local setting. There’s a lot of references to the local Yorkshire setting and how it’s been treated in the literary past, and how that literary tradition influenced the characters in this novel.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Deliverance-Inspector-Lynley-Mysteries/dp/0553384791/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+great+deliverance&qid=1562268024&s=gateway&sr=8-1)