Review - With No One As Witness

THE LOST BOYS OF LONDON
Inspector Lynley is back in top form as he hunts a serial killer.
BYLINE: BY SHERRYL CONNELLY

WITH NO ONE AS WITNESS

Elizabeth George, an American master of the British mystery, has always required a serious commitment from fans.

Her novels are intimidatingly long and dense with developments, and of course, she runs the risk of exhausting the charms of Thomas Lynley, the aristocrat and New Scotland Yard Detective Inspector who powers the series.

There have been Lynley novels that plodded along. she has now written 14, after all. but that's not the case in "With No One as Witness." With a graceful hand she strafes the lives of her small band of continuing characters while delivering an absorbing police procedural.

The body of a teenager, his hands burned black and his navel cut away, is discovered in one of London's seedier neighborhoods. His killing isn't the crux, though. It's the fact that three boys, their bodies bearing the same markings, have been found dead within as many months. The police hadn't bothered to investigate until the discovery of the fourth murder, by which time the corpse had turned white.

Lynley is at the epicenter of a vile case, one in which the urgency of bringing down a serial killer is almost obscured by the cynical maneuvers of his politically minded superior. George fully develops every nuance of the racially loaded case. and every thrill in the chase. But it's the note on which the novel ends that stuns as the series is violently wrenched onto new ground.