The Wall Street Journal
Careless
In Red by Elizabeth George
Reviewed by Tom Nolan
It’s The family -- that cauldron of solidarity and rebellion, loyalty and
betrayal -- looms large in the mystery novels of Elizabeth George. True to form,
"Careless in Red," set along the rugged coast of Cornwall, features a number of
trouble-fraught families whose members are pitted against one another as often
as they are entangled in the intrigues of rival clans.
There are, for instance, the Kernes, whose patriarch is determined to turn a
decrepit old resort-hotel into a destination vacation spot, with or without the
help of his flagrantly unfaithful wife and their two grown children. The
Angarrack brood is led by a man who runs a surfboard shop without the
participation of either his hapless son or his sullen daughter. In the
neighborhood is a veterinarian named Dairdre Trahair, whose family is remarkable
in that there seems to be no trace of it. As for Thomas Lynley of New Scotland
Yard -- Ms. George's well-born, familiar series hero -- he is not in a good way.
The shocking death of his pregnant wife -- an out-of-the-blue event that came at
the end of a previous novel -- has caused him to take seemingly permanent leave
from the Yard while he hikes the Cornish countryside in an agony of grief.
Once the inspector happens upon the body of a young cliff-climber, though, he is
drawn into a murder investigation. Soon he is receiving (or ignoring) orders
from the local police honcho, a divorced woman whose work relationship with her
policeman ex-husband is vexed by friction over time spent with their teenage
son.
When not grappling with their own problems, the cops try to answer questions
surrounding the murder victim: Was he killed because of his callous treatment of
a local girl he'd used and spurned? Might one of his own relatives have turned
on him in pathological rage? Or could his death be the retributive result of
much earlier events, half-buried in the generational past? It's not long before
Inspector Lynley summons for assistance his "longtime partner and fractious
friend" in crime-solving, Detective Sgt. Barbara Havers.
Even with Havers's aid, Lynley finds things hard going. "Cornwall had always
been a lawless place," one of its inhabitants notes; and its occupants tread
their own paths, carrying painful secrets and vengeful thoughts. "He longed for
simplicity where there was none," Lynley realizes. "He longed for answers that
were yes or no instead of an infinite string of maybe." But answers arrive in
their own good time, resolving matters in a satisfying but open-ended manner, in
keeping with Ms. George's psychologically nuanced approach to the evils that
lurk within the family circle -- and also the chances for redemptive love.
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