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.

–Reprinted from Mystery*File #13, June 1989 (slightly revised).