The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George

The consummate novelist, Elizabeth George has done it again. A mystery writer's job is to raise questions in the reader's mind, and the author begins the process by using the title. "Who is she?" the readers wonder, and "What possible punishment could she deserve?" Turns out the title question resonates with a number of characters of differing ages, classes and backgrounds. 

Havers and Lynley are characters I've come to think of as old friends, and the promise of checking up on them tempted me to pick up this 690-page tome. The chance to meet those two again, along with the expectation of a look-in at Isabelle Ardery to see if she's still drinking, tempted me on through the early scenes before the police appear. Like many good mysteries, this one builds slowly, then proceeds not quite apace through dead ends and red herrings. 

In the course of the story, we slowly get to know an enormous cast of characters. Through a particularly Georgian alchemy, those whose egregious misbehaviour we'd initially despised become more sympathetic as we learn what forces and circumstances drove them to become what they are. 

Why do so many disparate women feel they deserve punishment anyway? The answers are far from black and white. As George trots out all the big themes, she's relentless in putting the less savoury aspects of culture under a microscope. First she portrays intricate and twisted family dysfunction. In the name of loving and knowing what's best for their children, some parents presume to own them, claiming the right to use any and all kinds of pressure, secrecy and deception in service of their own illusory goals, not the least of which is the ego-driven fear, sometimes not entirely conscious, of what others will think of them. 

She reveals corrupt social mores that chain sexuality to shame, violence, brutality, and the unbridled pursuit of power. We're also made to see the lengths to which people will go to satisfy a desperate need to belong -- or at least to be seen to belong. In the course of unveiling these human flaws, readers must also witness the substance abuse people resort to in their failed attempts to cover the pain that results from the willful determination of families and societies to bend individuals to their pattern, regardless of personal cost.

In the end, the author draws together many threads to bring the book to a satisfying conclusion, offering at least the possibility of forgiveness, redemption, and a future better than the past. 

In series news (spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read a Lynley-Havers since What Came Before He Shot Her): Havers is learning to tap dance, and Lynley has a lady friend he wants to introduce to his family in Cornwall.