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Sense Of Duty Kicks In For Grieving Detective

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By AL HUTCHISON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 6, 2008

"Careless in Red," by Elizabeth George (HarperCollins, $27.95)

Superintendent Thomas Lynley is not your ordinary detective, as fans of Elizabeth George's novels (and their television adaptations) know.

For one thing, he's the eighth Earl of Asherton, a fact he constantly strives to avoid discussing.

More germane to "Careless in Red" is the fact that his pregnant wife, Helen, was murdered six months ago on their doorstep, and, mourning privately, Lynley has gone off to hike alone on the treacherous trails along the rugged coast of his native Cornwall, in the southwestern corner of England.

But then, in a remote spot far from the nearest town, he sees a body at the foot of a cliff. A young man has obviously fallen to his death while trying either to climb or descend the its face.

Lynley could continue on his hike, unseen, and avoid any unwanted complications, but instead his sense of duty kicks in.

He finds a woman who identifies herself as a doctor and volunteers to return to the scene with him.

Now the game's afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say. There's no way Lynley can simply walk away from the situation. He may be unshaven, unwashed, generally unkempt and carrying neither identification nor money, but he can hide his identity only for so long as he desperately seeks to deal with his grief on his own terms.

That's impossible, of course, and very soon a simple story becomes extremely complex as Lynley gets trapped, like a spider in an exceptionally intricate web.

Once it's clear the victim was murdered, the investigation is put in the hands of Bea Hannaford, a woman with spikes of red hair and whose charms are, to be charitable, seldom on display. And nothing triggers her oft-expressed anger more than the fact that Lynley, by now tidied up and unofficially deputized, keeps going off on his own explorations, indifferent to her instructions and scoldings.

Hannaford, a big shot in a small town, and Lynley, a hugely successful and admired detective from the big city, have totally different styles.

She favors the bull-in-the-china-shop approach, treating everyone she confronts not just as one of several plausible suspects but also, more often than not, as the most likely villain. Subtlety is not her long suit.

He, on the other hand, takes the long view, sorting things out carefully and deliberately, exploring intriguing clues that linger from a distant past, clues Hannaford wouldn't recognize if they jumped up and saluted.

Their relationship is not an easy one.

Scotland Yard dispatches Lynley's old sidekick, Barbara Havers, to help out, and although she is helpful, her presence also increases Hannaford's suspicions that Lynley is quietly out of her control.

"Careless in Red" is so filled with detours and details (about the sport of surfing, for example) that it requires more than 600 pages and a considerable investment of time to read. But George's admirers won't complain. She has struck gold again.

Al Hutchison of Citrus County is a freelance writer.

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