BOOK REVIEW: ‘This Body of Death’

THIS BODY OF DEATH
By Elizabeth George
Harper, $28.99, 692 pages

This is the kind of mystery that Elizabeth George does best, weaving a strange fictional story around the hideous murder of a 2-year-old child in the distant past. The incredible evil of a crime committed by children against a child hovers over the book like a specter, and hardly a detail of the toddler’s suffering is left out.

Ms. George’s scenario embodies two plots in one, and her readers are skillfully and deliberately distracted by the return to Scotland Yard of Inspector Thomas Lynley, still recovering from the murder of his wife on the doorstep of their home in an elegant London neighborhood. Significant in terms of this mystery is that he can’t get over the fact that the gun that killed her was wielded by a 12-year-old boy with no apparent reason to commit murder except the sinister influence of his peers to whom killing was a deluded form of manhood.

At the book’s opening, Lynley is being persuaded to consider resuming his work at Scotland Yard by his boss, Sir David Hillier, and of course his former colleague Sgt. Barbara Havers whose capacity to look like an unmade bed has not, surprisingly, impeded her career. The current fly in the bureaucratic ointment for Havers, and as it turns out, also for Lynley, is Acting Superintendent Isabelle Ardery. Ms. George has a talent to the point of a relish for writing about neurotic women and she has outdone herself this time.

Ardery is a woman struggling with a difficult divorce, a tendency to soothe her nerves by gulping down airline miniatures of vodka tucked into her purse, and a capacity for almost unbelievable tactlessness which makes it unlikely she would have achieved such an exalted position in law enforcement. There are faint echoes of the detective played by Helen Mirren in “Prime Suspect” in the Ardery character but she lacks the depth and capacity to inspire sympathy for her struggle in a world still largely controlled by men.

Ardery abuses her staff and even berates Lynley for being overprotective when he walks her to her car one night, recalling too late it was in the same neighborhood that his wife was shot. Ms. George flies a trial balloon of a possible connection between Lynley and the new superintendent, but it becomes rapidly clear that any personal link between them would be a one-night stand rather than a love affair.

Barbara Haver’s horrified reaction to the idea of such developments is predictable, especially since Ardery’s first reaction to Havers is not to assess the quality of her work but to brusquely order her to do something about her hair, her teeth and her clothes. This is especially painful for Havers since Lynley, her former partner and a most elegant man, judged her by what she did and not what she looked like.

In the midst of this welter of psychological clashes, a murder investigation is still being conducted and the plot wanders off in different directions so often that there are times in the almost 700-page book that the reader may feel that the corpse has been mislaid. It is all very complicated, with unlikely suspects emerging, but the author’s handling of it is very clever.

Ms. George has done a brilliant job of knitting fiction into a pattern of gruesome reality, and this is probably her best mystery in years. Lynley demonstrates his strength in his ability to rise above his grief for his dead wife and accept that returning to the world of crime prevention may be the way to restore himself. The continuing development of the deep affection between the aristocratic inspector and the plebeian Havers is told with skill and even tenderness. Their relationship, totally devoid of romance, is a tribute to the transcendent power of friendship.

While Ardery muddles along, and skirts the edge of dismissal and disgrace, the shadows of the past grow around the present and Ms. George distributes a few red herrings on her way to a spectacular denouement. The book’s climax, with the dramatic unveiling of the killer and his secrets, is chilling and unexpected, probably because Ms. George has built her case with patience and care. However, while the mystery is resolved, it leaves space for speculation on the future of Inspector Lynley.

Ms. George leaves no doubt that Lynley will be back in Scotland Yard, but the question remains whether he will wind up with the job of the colleague whom he has saved from being fired. It seems unlikely the hapless Ardery will survive in a job for which she herself has conceded she may be unsuited. What is comforting is that the redoubtable Sgt. Havers will survive, and even thrive, perhaps because neither Inspector Lynley nor the reader can get along without her.

Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and the Baltimore Sun.