Careless in Red, by Elizabeth George

I've just finished reading Careless in Red (HarperLuxe, 2008). Elizabeth George is a brilliant writer at the top of her game.

Having begun by watching the Inspector Lynley BBC Mystery series, and then gone on to read many of George's novels featuring Tommy Lynley and Barbara Havers, the same inimitable pair of mismatched sleuths, I am eager to get my hands on the next book.

George's chosen genre of fiction is often considered to be "mere" escape literature, but her work is much more than that. The characters and conflicts are deeply developed, and the themes are easily accessible to any reader: family secrets, reluctance to forgive, regret for past errors.

Remarkably, Elizabeth George is an American, writing in a time-honoured British genre which she has further refined. Her works are painstakingly researched, and, to my Canadian ear at least, completely authentic in every detail.

Indeed, George says that she never sets a scene in a location that she has not personally walked over. I would add that she has an excellent ear for the local speech of favoured settings like East London.

This novel is set in Cornwall and dedicated to the memory of a murder victim whose killers are known but have "gone unpunished." Though fortunately this situation is not part of most people's everyday lives, the characters are all-too-evocative of real people and certain memorable lines have wider application.

Some of these are philosophical: "She considered the ways in which 'getting even' was merely a questionable euphemism for 'learning nothing' (755)." And the question, "If one person's truth is an unbearable blow to another person and simultaneously unnecessary for him to know, need one speak it? (849)."

And more poignantly, for one tragic character, "[life's]...demands were for compromise and change...which required the ability to switch courses when necessary, to modify behaviours, and to alter dreams so that they could meet the realities that they came up against. But he'd never been able to do any of that, so he'd been crushed, and life had rolled over his shattered body (577)."

Other lines are wryly funny -- "the sort of woman who did not believe a man's ego had to be preserved by allowing him moments of specious supremacy over her (360)", and "...enough brands of junk food to keep morbid obesity going on for several generations (562)."

With the realism of George's writing, and a plot that revolves around the murder of an eighteen-year-old, the story is not easy. Yet George manages to keep faith with the reader of fiction by holding to her part of the writer-reader bargain: her story does deliver moral solace in the end, though not in the expected way. That is its genius.

Hats off to you, Elizabeth George! Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and other intellectual ancestors in who wrote in the British mystery genre would be proud.

Finally, Dear Reader, do not be alarmed by the page numbers. They refer to the large print edition.