Sat 22 Feb 2020
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. BBC/PBS, 12 March 2001 (Season 1, episode 1, with Nathaniel Parker & Sharon Small).
In recent years British mysteries seem to have evolved into books which everybody in them is so afflicted with such character flaws that the mysteries in them are overpowered. While George is not British, she’s got the same dour taste in her writing that it is as if she were.
Or in other words, even in this, her first book, she’s got it down pat. Investigating a hideous crime in northern England are aristocratic Insp. Lynley, the golden boy of Scotland Yard, and Sgt. Barbara Havers, plain and unattractive (to put it mildly). If you like P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, here’s another.
February 22nd, 2020 at 3:02 pm
In spite of my own personal dissatisfaction with this, the first of the Lynley-Havers mysteries, the series of course has gone on to great success, with the most recent one, #20, having been published in 2018.
February 22nd, 2020 at 5:59 pm
I remember this book from years ago … it’s time for a reread … thanks for your motivating posting …
February 22nd, 2020 at 7:30 pm
This review may motivate me too, to do the same. While I have not read any of George’s other books in the meantime, I have watched one of the BBC TV adaptations, and I enjoyed it.
February 22nd, 2020 at 10:40 pm
I like George, but in recent years the crime and mystery element seems to take a backseat to a continuous soap opera and commentary on British society, which I wish had a bit more mystery and crime among the serious commentary.
February 22nd, 2020 at 11:02 pm
Steve, check the way you spell “Lynley” and choose one over the other.
February 22nd, 2020 at 11:31 pm
Ha! Will do. Thanks, Randy!
February 23rd, 2020 at 5:45 pm
Obviously you haven’t had time to make the correction. Take a look at the final paragraph where you still spell it with a “d” as “Lyndley.”
Here in Minnesota, PBS has been showing the early episodes. Twice the channel has come to the episode “If Wishes Were Horses” which ends with Havers being shot by the killer with what looks like a sawed-off shotgun. The next week the channel has scheduled a different mystery series.
My guess is that the station simply does not own the rest of the series. I’ve borrowed DVDs of the entire series from the local library to find out what happened next. At this point I have reached the point in the series where Lynley has been arrested (and read his rights) for threatening someone in the course of the investigation. “You’ve really gone off the rails now!” is the way one of his superiors has stated it.
To be continued . . .
February 23rd, 2020 at 6:54 pm
*EXPLETIVE DELETED*
I changed all of the Linley’s to Lynley’s, I hope, but I didn’t see that extra “d”.
Sometimes you just have to keep after me, Randy. This may be the digital age, but sometimes I think my fingers just aren’t up to it.
February 24th, 2020 at 6:57 pm
Your fingers must think for themselves.
February 29th, 2020 at 12:07 am
Recently, I’ve discovered that the Minnesota PBS station that was showing only the first half of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries series has now scheduled the later episodes for the next few weeks. I’ve seen most of these by now by borrowing them from the local library, but intend to watch them again.
February 29th, 2020 at 5:59 am
Here’s my review of of the Lynley TV mysteries. I’ve been busy with other uninteresting mundane things, or I’d been more active in going looking for it before now:
“PLAYING FOR THE ASHES.†An episode of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. BBC television: Season Two, Episode One, 10 March 2003. Shown on PBS television in the US. Nathaniel Parker, Sharon Small, Lesley Vickerage, with Clare Swinburne, Phylllis Logan, Joe Duttine, Neve McIntosh, Curtis Flowers. Based on the novel by Elizabeth George. Director: Richard Spence.
This is the first of the second season as shown in England in March 2003. It’s not quite clear to me yet, but I believe that each season has consisted of a month’s worth of four adaptations of Elizabeth George’s novels, following a one-shot pilot show which appeared in 2001. [Season Six, 2007, the final season, had only two episodes.]
In the US they’ve been shown as part of the PBS Mystery! series, and this sample of size one was enough to show me that they’re hands-down better than 99% of the mystery and detective fare that US networks provide.
Not that I have ever read any of the books they’re based on. They’re huge, and sometimes I intimidate easily. Truth be told, though, I tried one and (a rarity for me) I stopped after two or three chapters, thinking the book to be only one of those gloomy class-based rants where one’s socio-economic status is the primary factor in one’s standing with the rest of the populace.
Well, it could be that I was right, but if I’m wrong, you can tell me. All I’ll do is to promise that I’ll go back and read another as soon as I can, either way. I have the feeling, though, since the paperback version of this particular book consists of over 700 pages of small print, and the TV movie is only 90 minutes long – well, they couldn’t have gotten it all in, could they? So they streamlined the story (I’m assuming) and concentrated mostly on the mystery – the mysterious death by fire of a soccer star who’d been having problems recently, domestic and otherwise.
There are class differences between Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) and his partner in investigation, Sgt. Barbara Havers (Sharon Small), to be sure, emphasized by the fact that I had to concentrate quite a bit to follow the [lower class] accent of the chirpy Havers. The soccer star was black, his wife white (Swinburne) and their son Jimmy (Flowers) in this hugely dysfunctional family is an emotional mess, and he is the one who confesses to the murder. (Lynley doesn’t believe him.)
The soccer star’s benefactor, the wealthy Miriam Whitelaw (Logan) has an estranged daughter Olivia who is even more of a mess, doing tricks on the street, doing drugs, and doing things for the pro-animal activists led by Chris Farraday (Duttine), who has taken Olivia in off the streets for his own reasons.
So, OK, there’s still enough socio-economic differences between all of these people to make a pretty good book, even without the mystery, but the detective work is solid and well above average in competency, and that’s what will have me coming back for more. The rest is a bonus, and altogether it makes for an excellent hour-and-a-half’s worth of entertainment.
Definitely a highlight: Neve McIntosh’s performance as the mostly distraught and definitely disturbed daughter. Somewhat puzzling: Lynley’s attraction to case profiler Helen Clyde (Lesley Vickerage). There’s no chemistry between them at all, and she makes her disagreements with him on the investigation seem as much personal as they are professional.
— September 2004
March 1st, 2020 at 4:10 pm
While I read A Great Deliverance several years ago I have no memory of the story at all, but have watched the TV adaptation more than once and plan to watch it again this week. The local Mystery Group has scheduled a discussion of the novel for the third Monday of March so I will get to read it again and hope to remember more this time around. My understanding is that there are few similarities between the books and the adaptations, but I may not return to make any detailed comparisons. Life is too short.
I agree about Lesley Vicarage as Helen Lynley. She was replaced by Catherine Russell and one could believe the relationship with Nathaniel Parker. Unfortunately they wrote her out of the series.
April 1st, 2020 at 12:04 am
[…] one doesn’t require the same amount of effort to read as the one by Elizabeth George, reviewed here a little earlier. Grimes’ characters seem to have their good days as well as bad. They’re still […]