New Lynley Investigation from Elizabeth George, SOMETHING TO HIDE

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Elizabeth George can really spin a great investigation when she’s not trying so hard to teach the shocking discoveries she has made in her own explorations.”

Elizabeth George’s mysteries featuring Scotland Yard investigators Barbara Havers and Thomas Lynley began with A Great Deliverance in 1988. Now her 21st book in the series, Something to Hide, probes life and death in the Nigerian community of North London, along with the custom of female genital mutilation (FGM).

For those new to George’s work, the 687-page book isn’t likely to carry them into loving the series, because the noted Scotland Yard investigators don’t come into the action until page 119. And for readers who treasure Lynsley and Havers, that’s also a problem—chapters cascading about people who are in emotional and physical pain, in the midst of a socioeconomic disaster.

George clearly has done massive amounts of research for this book. Unfortunately, that message keeps coming back, when instead it might have been far more effective to simplify the plot a bit, and let the research take a backstage role.

The meeting in which Lynsley comes onto the case sums up the positioning of his investigation, in a politically challenging time:

“In [Lynley’s] morning meeting with Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hiller and the head of the Press Office, Stephen Deacon, the political concerns of both men had been writ large enough and dark enough for a mole in sunlight to read them. … Teo Bontempi was not only a police detective, she was a Black police detective. The last thing the Metropolitan Police needed to have hurled at them was an accusation that not enough was being thrown into the investigation because the office in question was Black or female or both. Racism, sexism, misogyny … There could not be a whisper of any of this during the investigation and did the Acting Detective Chief Superintendent understand what was being said?”

Even after this, the book is plagued by too many points of view and not enough agency. Series readers, who’ll want to tackle this anyway, may do best to skip “Part I” in order to leap into the investigation. Newcomers to the Lynsley books should probably try an earlier title.

That said, if this weren’t a “genre” book – that is, a Scotland Yard investigation – it might stand as an imposing literary probe of Nigerian/North London culture. Perhaps that’s how it should instead be shelved. But then the author would need to take out the endless attempts at Black language, wouldn’t she?

There are better books to stack on the bedside table or take to a desert island. Which is a shame, because Elizabeth George can really spin a great investigation when she’s not trying so hard to teach the shocking discoveries she has made in her own explorations.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

In the Mood for an American Dystopia Thriller from John Gilstrap?

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“This all adds up to why a John Gilstrap thriller, crammed with violence and testing of the soul, might be the perfect work of fiction to sink into, in a tough time for the real world.”

Global pandemic. Rising sea levels. Powerful nations making threats. When all that news of the moment seems too much to handle, it’s time to pick up the newest in the Victoria Emerson thriller series from John Gilstrap, Blue Fire.

Gilstrap’s most extensive series, with protagonist Jonathan Grave, took the action to both international escapades and American militia terrain, always featuring the explosive skills of Grave and his main sidekick, Boxers, aka the Big Guy. Connected unofficially with American government, Grave and his team applied skills that mirrored expertise Gilstrap acquired himself in explosives safety and hazardous waste.

In 2021, Gilstrap’s first Victoria Emerson thriller proposed an America on the brink of nuclear war. Emerson’s a U.S. congressional representative for the state of West Virginia, and when she’s ordered to enter a safety bunker without her three teenage sons (she’s a single mother), she refuses and finds other shelter.

As Blue Fire opens, Victoria Emerson’s running a survival-based town where she’s never without both a handgun and an M4 rifle. Her former government status isn’t well known, but her leadership skills have made her essential, and she’s maintaining the safety of a growing population there.

You know how it is: If you’re doing better than the folks around you, someone wants in. This time, for Emerson’s town of Ortho, West Virginia, invaders jealous of the community’s relative prosperity launch a coordinated attack. The process of holding them off demands that each of her sons become a leader, too—and face dangers that no mother wants near her family. But if they’re all going to make it, Emerson’s got to both let go, and teach skills like crazy.

Her oldest son, Adam, is out there on his own, probably headed toward the family’s home farm. But Emerson and her younger sons can’t get there until they’ve straightened out Ortho, and maybe some adjacent towns as well.

Check out Victoria Emerson as she endeavors to combine leading, acting as judge, and being true to herself, with Mr. and Mrs. Sable, called on the carpet for theft:

“Victoria felt heat rising in her ears. ‘Society may have collapsed, Mrs. Sable, but civilization has not. At least not here. Not on my watch. … We’re rebuilding from nothing here. Months from now, some of our residents will be thriving, and, alas, some of our residents will have a very long winter. Perhaps their last, but I certainly hope not.’”

Count on plenty of the firefights and explosions and team infiltrations that Gilstrap’s become noted for, a rapid pace of action, direct frontier justice, and hints that the ex-government hiding in a bunker could be a problem—but then again, there are clearly more books in this page-turning series, in which Victoria Emerson can continue to test her strengths against the grim aspects of dystopia, and seek a few minutes (or longer) to savor loyalty, friendship, and perhaps a bit more. If there’s time before her world ends.

This all adds up to why a John Gilstrap thriller, crammed with violence and testing of the soul, might be the perfect work of fiction to sink into, in a tough time for the real world.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.