BOOK: "This Body of Death", by Elizabeth George

16th in a series by Elizabeth George, featuring Investigator Thomas Linley, a wealthy Earl who just happens to work in the police department - or maybe it’s Scotland Yard.  His beloved wife, Helen, was killed off in the prior novel, and he is persuaded to return to work in this novel.  Better he should have stayed in bed.

First things first: be prepared to read the most horrifying and gruesome narrative about the abduction, torture, and murder of a 2-year old child - I had to skip over this thread because it was so revolting, coming just after the Newtown shootings, and being a grandmother. The author tries to make us understand how such a dreadful event could happen. OK. I just don't enjoy reading bloody sadistic descriptions of degradation.

The setting is very British, set in scenic Hampshire - slang and vernacular that need to be looked up ( thank goodness for a British dictionary selection on my Kindle). Researching the The New Forest setting helped - thank you Wickipedia. The major storyline involves an ancient treasure, the aching need for romantic love and its fatal consequences. A lost puppy victim is stabbed in a moody cemetery, and the suspects are a varied group: a mentally ill man, her old and new lovers, her fellow lodgers, even her own brother.

The story itself is long and choppy. George withholds information, switches points-of-view as fast as a pony's tail flick, and the Isabelle Ardrey character left me grinding my teeth with her insensitivity and stupidity - I was incredulous that she would be in the running for a superintendent's job as she ineptly directs the murder investigation.

What's interesting is how the disjointedness of the narrative begins to resolve towards the last quarter of this overly -long novel. Then ending is predictable.

Other reviews suggest that this book, the 16th, is suffering from series staleness, as happens more often than not with detective novels. So, forewarned, read only if you're hungry for a Brit murder mystery and can't find anything better.  (Review also published on Amazon.)

As for me, my favorite literary genre, the mystery -what’s to be done here? They should publish “spoilers”, rate the gruesomeness and horror of them for me, so I could just read the dainty Agatha Christie spin-offs and be contented thusly.