Deception on His Mind
by Elizabeth George
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elizabeth GeorgeEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-10
ISBN: 0553575090
Number of pages: 752
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of Deception on His Mind
Book Review: A Slow 750 Page Mega Novel and Then a Bad Ending, or Essentially No Ending, Yikes!!!
Summary: 3 Stars
This is my first Elizabeth George novel and it was a great disappointment. What was the author thinking? She is a good writer but the structure and length is simply awful here. I think she got caught up with her writing experience and lost sight of what makes a good novel. Somehow a simple police novel became longer than Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, 300 pages longer than Dostoevsky, believe it or not.
The novel opens strongly with a good hook: a murder on a beach on the English east coast. But, then that incident is followed by the long introduction of character after character, each with a detailed introduction. By page 100, the reader starts to think about terminating the read. By page 250 the plot has become clear and the motivation to read the whole 750 page novel has evaporated. Why read another 500 pages when we know who are the bad guys? After that I could not read each and every page. It was a mindless read that would take two or three days, and I skipped forward to page 600 or so where I picked up the story - without missing a heartbeat - and continued to read each and every word. It appeared that I had missed nothing of consequence in my jump over hundreds of pages. The novel ended inconclusively about 150 pages later and my hunch about the outcome was 75% correct. Overall, this was a bad reading experience.
There are many fundamental problems here. The two protagonists are two female police officers but they do not act like police officers. There seems to be no crime scene investigation, and for example, one of them walks around the hotel room of the victim picking up and examining objects at random. Was that room ever investigated properly? There are no police procedures in what is supposed to be a police story. So, that element lacks realism.
Secondly, the level of conversation is at a banal level, where the women use words such as "snigger" and other slang. They have a lot of mindless talk and not much action. Every 50 pages or so there is a sex related incident which I presume that is supposed to keep the reader interested.
There are lots of characters living in the seaside community in the UK, including a large group of Pakistani immigrants. The victim is a Pakistani male so a question is whether or not this is a hate crime. That is a main plot element here. The author handles this well, but again, these sections are far too long and inconclusive.
So, the problem is length, far too long. This is not War and Peace, it is a detective story: 750 pages! And, the primary character, Barbara, a police woman from Scotland Yard is not that sympathetic a character. George's famous Inspector Lynley plays no important role here.
This is a novel that should be 350 pages but somehow survived the edit and was published as a 750 page mega-novel. It is a novel to avoid: 3 stars.
Summary of Deception on His Mind
Balford-le-Nez is a dying seatown on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town's small but growing Asian community, is found dead on its beach, his neck broken, sleepy Balford-le-Nez ignites. Working solo, without her long-time partner Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, Sergeant Barbara Havers must probe not only the mind of a murderer and a case very close to her own heart, but the terrible price people pay for deceiving others...and themselves.In Deception on His Mind Sergeant Barbara Havers places herself at the center of an investigation in Essex concerning the mysterious death of a recently arrived immigrant from Pakistan. Although still recovering from the broken ribs and nose (received at the end of In the Presence of the Enemy), Havers convinces herself that she needs to stay on the job in order to help her neighbor Taymullah Azhar and his elfin daughter Hadiyyah who have a familial connection to the dead man. As is typical with Elizabeth George's novels (this is the 10th in a popular and powerful series), the murder and its investigation are the central feature of the story. But in this case they are also the means by which she explores the Pakistani experience in a foreign and not always friendly culture. As Havers herself notes, the food may well have improved in Britain with an increasingly diverse population, but that same population has "engendered a score of polyglot problems." Whether or not the dead man is a victim of a racially motivated crime is only one of the questions Havers tries to sort out. The result, with George's typically complex characterizations and deft plot turns, is a deeply satisfying novel. Fans of Havers's superior officer, Thomas Lynley, and his lady love Helen Clyde will be disappointed as the two are off on their honeymoon. But with Lynley out of the picture, Havers, with her prickly personality, caustic tongue, and sound investigative skills, comes well and truly into her own. Nitpickers might question one aspect of the final denouement--motive and opportunity are securely in place but the means are on the outskirts of unbelievable. Still, the book is a rich and enjoyable one that continues to tickle the imagination well after it has been shelved amidst other favorites. --K.A. Crouch
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