ELIZABETH GEORGE – Just One Evil Act. Lindley & Havers #18. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 2013. Penguin, softcover, 2014.

   American Elizabeth George, who writes the popular series about Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sgt. Barbara Havers, does not write door stoppers. You need to be able to lift door stoppers. Ms. George writes triple-deckers in the 19th Century sense, this one weighing in at a svelte 719 pages.

   That’s the bad news, the good is, for fans of the work of P.D. James, Ruth Rendell (especially the Wexford books), and Martha Grimes, Ms. George more than ably keeps the side up. Thomas Lynley is a devilishly good looking English aristocrat who chose to become a copper, with his most reliable “man” Sgt. Barbara Havers, a lower middle-class sort with a chip on her shoulder about the upper classes, and just about everything else.

   Despite, or because of that, these two make an effective team marshaling the forces of the Yard and their own capable minds to solve quite human mysteries.

   James liked to set her works against institutional backgrounds where George prefers more mundane and human crimes. This one starts off as a bit of a child in danger plot when Havers learns her friend Tamar Azhar’s daughter has been taken by his wife in what seems to be a parental kidnapping by an unfit parent.

   Havers’ heart frequently leads her head, so no surprise that when the child is reported kidnapped in Italy, and she is told by the Yard it is the Italian Police’s business and not hers, she doesn’t listen as soon makes trouble.

   Then, when nothing turns out to be what it seemed to be, Lynley has to save her, his department, and find the child while playing departmental and international politics.

   The Lynley novels are densely populated, they cover a great deal of ground including both series characters tangled and painful relationships off duty and much more fleshed out secondary characters and suspects than in the average mystery.

   They probably are too long, but that seems to be what her fans want. Certainly the good writing helps, but I would not try to force one of these on anyone who doesn’t like long books.

   I’m not sure any mystery novel can really survive 700 plus pages of small print and honestly have the word suspense used about it, but George is a fine writer, and holds up the honor of the form here.

   But if you try it and don’t like it, for God’s sake don’t throw it. You could end up with an injury or the center of a homicide investigation yourself.