ONE OF MY FAVORITE AUTHORS - Gloria Alden

I just finished the latest Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers mystery by Elizabeth George, the 690 page The Punishment She Deserves. Although it took days, it lived up to my expectations of keeping me always interested until the very end.

In this book, the cozy bucolic town of Ludlow is stunned when one of its most revered and respected citizens , deacon Ian Druitt, is accused of child molestation by an anonymous phone call. The local PCSO is told by his chief officer to lock Druit up in the Ludlow’s rarely used police station. While there the deacon’s body is found hanging from a doorknob in the room he’d been closed in. It was determined it was a suicide.

Druitt’s father, a wealthy man with connections, calls on a member of parliament he knows to contact the head of New Scotland Yard and have him send someone to investigate what happened otherwise he is going to sue for a large amount of money. DCS Isabelle Ardery is assigned to the job with detective sergeant Barbara Havers to go to the small English town of Ludlow and find out what happened. Ardery is not happy to have Barbara Havers because Barbara tends to go her own way.

 During the investigation they talk with various people including the local PCSO, Gary Ruddock, the only police officer in this tiny town, who brought him in and then left him locked up to take care of drunken college students creating  havoc in the local pubs. Ruddock was the one who later found Ian Druitt dead.

During the investigation DCS Ardery can’t find any evidence that would make anyone think it was anything but suicide, however Sergeant Barbara Havers disagrees and thinks there’s a good chance he was murdered, but she can’t convince Guv Ardery it’s anything other than suicide.

DCS Ardery, becomes an interesting character throughout because she’s an alcoholic who can’t live without her vodka and other drinks. She tries to hide it from Havers, but is not successful and ends the investigation even though Barbara believes she’s not looking at things correctly, but her boss insists they go back to London.

When they return to London, DCI Lynley talks to Barbara and Isabelle. He knows Isabelle has a drinking problem and lectures her which she doesn’t like. She assigns Barbara to write up a report on their investigation, and then refuses to send it to the commissioner because Barbara had included some of her suspicions of the death. So DCI Lynley and Sergeant Havers are sent back to Ludlow and the area to further investigate.

One of the things that kept me, and I’m sure other readers, too, interested was the other characters who are brought in with their own thoughts, backgrounds they keep hidden and worries. There is the young girl Dena – or Ding as she’s known, who has an obsession I won’t go into here, until she learns her mother has been lying to her all her life.

Then there’s Missa, who also has a secret she’s been hiding and previously had been talking to Deacon Ian Druitt about it. When her last name shows up on his cell phone, Lynley and Havers end up interviewing her grandmother, who had the same last name, before they learn it was Missa he’d been talking to. And we’re introduced to Missa’s messed up family to a certain extent, and her long-time boyfriend Justin.

Then there is the head of the local police department, who had the local PCSO Gary keeping his eye on her college son, Finnegan. Finn, his other name, was living in the same house as Ding, another girl, and another boy, Brutus..  Her husband found out what she was doing and disagreed that she should be watching 

over their son like that.

All in all the mystery – although I figured it out earlier – was interesting because of all the different characters whose stories were interesting in and of itself all the way through.

  

On the back cover were six positive reviews. I’m including this one because I so agree with it.

The Washington Post, wrote “. . . George’s ability to continually enhance the portraits of Lynley, Havers, and other recurring characters while generating fully fleshed new ones for each novel is nothing less than superlative, and her atmospheric prose, complete with lovely and detailed descriptions of her setting, combines to add literary gravitas to her work . . . A worthy addition to her portfolio and one that simultaneously disturbs and satisfies.”

  

I have read and own all twenty of Elizabeth George’s Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Barbara Havers mysteries. After reading this book I think I’ll go back and start at the very first one all over again.

Have you read any of Elizabeth George’s Lynley and Havers mysteries?