Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley Book 9)

I like this book of hers because the main character is Sergeant Havers, instead of Lynley, Helen, Deborah, and Simon. Don't get me wrong, I think they are good chracters but after so many books it gets boring. Also she includes a bit of her past. This was the first of her books I read and I throughly enjoyed it. After reading it I rushed out to get the rest of her books and read them as fast as possible. I think her writing style is superb and that she has a great narritive quality. I didn't like the fact that everybody on the book but Havers was prejudiced, but the book is still very good. I am also happy that she is writing more about Azhar and Hadyyiah, they are a good addition to this book. She seems to have reseached in preparation of the book intensively and makes it believble. She weaves a good plot and develops her characters very well. The ending was a bit of a surprise but I had a vague premonition of what it might be. Overall, a good, long read that is truly gratifying.

The possible murder of businessman and soon-to-be married Haytham Querashi causes an uproar in the Pakistani community in England, who do not trust the police to fairly conduct their investigation. While her partner Lynley is (thankfully) on his honeymoon, Detective Barbara Havers joins up with her old school friend Emily Barlow to investigate the death. Tensions flare between a local Pakistani activist, who happens to be the cousin of her neighbor, who is mediating, and the English-born detectives. A pregnancy, underlying racism and classism, an extortion ring and a kidnapping help make this book a fast-paced and absorbing read. However, some important plot threads are left dangling, most importantly the pregnant widow. Did she have an abortion? If not, will her family still accept her? Why go to all the trouble of developing a character, if you're going to deprive the reader of her fate.

While her boss Thomas Lynley is away on his honeymoon, Sergeant Barbara Havers spends recovery time after being the victim of a shooting, on a so-called holiday at Balford-le-Nez, a seaside community with a growing population of Asians. She joins forces with a former colleagus Emily Barlow, who has been recently promoted to the rank of Detective Chief Inspector, and whom Barbara admires greatly for her superior police work.

The body of a recent Pakhistani immigrant has been discovered on the beach and has been identified as the man brought to England as the prospective husband of the daughter of the towns' wealthiest businessman. The son of the businessman is intent on raising racial conflict in the town, leaving the police to wonder at his motives.

It's a good murder/mystery story with plenty of twists and turns and, although rather wordy, is nevertheless a good, long read.

This is my first Elizabeth George novel and it was a great disappointment. What was the author thinking? She is a good writer but the structure and length is simply awful here. I think she got caught up with her writing experience and lost sight of what makes a good novel. Somehow a simple police novel became longer than Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, 300 pages longer than Dostoevsky, believe it or not.

The novel opens strongly with a good hook: a murder on a beach on the English east coast. But, then that incident is followed by the long introduction of character after character, each with a detailed introduction. By page 100, the reader starts to think about terminating the read. By page 250 the plot has become clear and the motivation to read the whole 750 page novel has evaporated. Why read another 500 pages when we know who are the bad guys? After that I could not read each and every page. It was a mindless read that would take two or three days, and I skipped forward to page 600 or so where I picked up the story - without missing a heartbeat - and continued to read each and every word. It appeared that I had missed nothing of consequence in my jump over hundreds of pages. The novel ended inconclusively about 150 pages later and my hunch about the outcome was 75% correct. Overall, this was a bad reading experience.

There are many fundamental problems here. The two protagonists are two female police officers but they do not act like police officers. There seems to be no crime scene investigation, and for example, one of them walks around the hotel room of the victim picking up and examining objects at random. Was that room ever investigated properly? There are no police procedures in what is supposed to be a police story. So, that element lacks realism.

Secondly, the level of conversation is at a banal level, where the women use words such as "snigger" and other slang. They have a lot of mindless talk and not much action. Every 50 pages or so there is a sex related incident which I presume that is supposed to keep the reader interested.

There are lots of characters living in the seaside community in the UK, including a large group of Pakistani immigrants. The victim is a Pakistani male so a question is whether or not this is a hate crime. That is a main plot element here. The author handles this well, but again, these sections are far too long and inconclusive.

So, the problem is length, far too long. This is not War and Peace, it is a detective story: 750 pages! And, the primary character, Barbara, a police woman from Scotland Yard is not that sympathetic a character. George's famous Inspector Lynley plays no important role here.

This is a novel that should be 350 pages but somehow survived the edit and was published as a 750 page mega-novel. It is a novel to avoid: 3 stars.

Barbara Havers is dogged as she puts herself onto this mystery ride. Her character is tremendously imbued with smarts and integrity. Elizabeth George wove another great novel from British criminals and less than saintly inspectors matched against a woman of principles, Barbara Havers.

Some Spoilers

At over 700 pages the story became too overwrought. The ending with the boat chase seemed too contrived.

The characters are interesting for the most part and the Muslim plot added interest. But some of the interplay became tiresome. What was the point of the dying Agathe scenes? The eight year old Hadiyyah didn't connect with me. What was she doing all day long while her father was with the main culprit Mohannad? And why were there so many culprits?

As one reviewer mentioned, Sherlock Holmes solved most of his case with forty pages.

This was my first experience with Elizabeth George. My impression was that George could have benefited greatly from better editing. Her story would be better with fewer, but more deeply developed characters, more subtlety, and fewer unbelievable sub-plots. The mystery aspect of the book was done well enough to keep me guessing through most of the book. Unfortunately by the time the real murderer was revealed in the last few pages, so much ground had been covered it came without much surprise. George's attempt to write social commentary on the murder mystery structure was intriguing but not well executed. The Pakistanis and the gays tended to be more caricatures than believable characters. The story line kept returning to the bigotry of the English against the Pakistanis. George apparently didn't credit the reader with enough intelligence to get her point without being beaten over the head with it repeatedly throughout the story. Overall, if one can overlook the flaws, Deception on His Mind is good airplane reading which keeps the pages turning and the reader amused.

Readers should not judge Elizabeth George by this book. It is far and away the least satisfying of all her work. Every, and I do mean EVERY, character introduced is a suspect, and when we learn the real murderer, we are astonished. How on earth could she/he have learned the habits of the victim enough to do the man in? Absolutely unbelievable! And equally unsatisfying is her decision to leave hanging the predicaments the other characters are in. What did Sahlah decide? What did Theo decide? What did Emily decide about reporting Barbara? What did Barbara decide about reporting Emily? Did Mohannad get caught? With more than 600 pages invested in developing the story, couldn't the author have given us at least one paragraph helping to resolve Sahlah's predicament, for example? Nonetheless, I strongly recommend Elizabeth George's other books. Don't judge a book by its cover, or Elizabeth George by Deception On His Mind. (And PS: where does that title come from, and what does it have to do with the plot?)

Elizabeth George is the first mystery author that I read who tried to handle the Pakistani population problem in Great Britain. Since that time I've read several and always come to the conclusion that is any vehicle without to lay blame on the white racial colonial system that existed before we were born.
Barbara Havers finds an idol whose investigation of a murder is tinged with racial overtones. She is shocked and hurt to discover the woman detective has feet of clay, but it becomes funny when one remembers earlier volumes where Havers damn every man who walked.
Georges' main characters are strong and vivid, but her grasp of social commentary is shallow.
The earlier books in the series are much better mysteries.
Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.

I read all the Elizabeth George books as they come out, and am full of admiration for her accuracy in depicting English slang and customs. George does best with her working class characters like Barbara Havers; giving Sgt Havers a whole book to star in was a good idea, but the terrifying top cop in the piece is a cartoon. Wish we knew what happened to Sahlah. "Playing for the Ashes" remains her best book. And to those who wonder what pilgarlic means, according to my wonderful New Shorter Oxford English dictionary, Pilgarlic is 1. A bald head, a bald-headed man; derog., a weak or pitiable person

"Deception on His Mind" was my second Elizabeth George novel, and it won't be my last. It was great having Havers in the spotlight in this latest novel -- she is quickly becoming my favorite. Good plotlines and a well-written story are once again in evidence here, athough I was a bit disappointed in the ending. I find myself still wondering what happened to Sahlah and Theo. I am also curious to see what becomes of Barbara's new relationship with her neighbors, and most especially what kind of turn her career will take. I'm looking forward to finding out, and I will definitely be coming back for more when she releases her next novel.

I liked the setting; George used the overpowering heat very effectively. I also liked the variety of characters, but the plot really lost its momentum by the middle of the book. Perhaps there were just too many characters; there were certainly way too many loose ends. If you are going to have entire chapters devoted to the inner thoughts of secondary players (Rachel, Agatha, Cliff, etc.) you need to have more closure. It almost seemed that George didn't quite think that Havers was interesting enough on her own without Lynley and his aristo pals. I did like Emily Barlow a lot and hope we see her again. So, a good one, but not her best.

Not only does George excel in setting an intriguing plot, she's a master of directing the reader's thoughts into all kinds of wrong directions whereas in the end I felt as if the truth had been obvious all along. In the midst of one of -as it seems- England's hottest summers it is the spicy variety of illutrious characters and their perspectives through which George reveals the story to the readers that makes the book a thrilling treat. Though her dramatis personnae are artful and at the same time almost touchable copies out of everyone's everyday reality this novel's weak point lies in the author's attempt to invoke her insights (living in the States) into Pakistan culture and its problems in the UK. Her inturcultural conclusions mostly remain on the surface and to my mind she tries to tell the reader too much instead of actually revealing and showing cultural dimensions! Under the bottom line, the sense of humor of "Mystery Liz" -yet unmet- makes Barbara Havers' solo adventure ever more colorful (watch out for the hospital scene with Agatha Shaw and Akram Malik) and it is her magical mixture which keeps me up 'til well after bed-time that leaves a Patricia Cornwell and a Minette Walters somewhat behind and makes them faint just a tiny bit.

This is one of Elizabeth George's best novels, and I've read all of them. She takes on a tricky subject here, race relations between Indian/Pakistani immigrants and the white residents of small-town England, and is able to show how they play out not only in terms of the civilian population but also within the police establishment. And she does all this in the context of a Lynley-Havers mystery that will keep you guessing until the end!

I won't give away the ending for those who haven't read it, but I will say that you NEED to read this book to understand fully the novels that come after it, as Barbara Havers suffers the consequences of her actions at the end of this one for quite a long time....

*be warned, spoilers ahead* There are plenty of reviews here so mine will be superfluous, but I can't pass up the opportunity to vent about this book. There are lots of good things in her little snapshot of British race relations, small town politics, etc. But as a mystery, the book falls flat with a completely stupid ending. There is no possible way that the murderer could have done the murder as it is described in the book. George has spent considerable (!) time building up a picture of the cloistered existence of these Pakistani women: they rarely leave the house, they are never seen by strange men, etc. etc. etc. and suddenly we're supposed to believe this woman sneaks out of the house to trail a guy around long enough to figure out his habits and routines, then she steals a jet-ski, races across the sea to set up an elaborate trap to murder him while making it appear as an accident (not noticing the other person lurking around watching), and jet-skis home, all unnoticed by her ever-present family members? Give me a break. It's lazy writing and it's insulting to readers to give them a crap ending like that after ALL that build-up.

Too long, too boring, no Lynley & St. James. If Ms. George wants to stray from her strong main characters, why not explore St. James & Deborah...one of the most interesting couples in fiction. Imagine the TV series: older, experienced, intelligent, disabled hero; beautiful, younger, intelligent heroine. What about the two women - Mrs. Lynley & Mrs. St. James. As each has been the lover of the other's husband, this would mak for some interesting conversation! Barbara bores me

This is another Inspector Lymley novel, which, like its predecessors, is very well written. All the Lymley novels are long enough that she really develops the characters; they are not simply your standard detective or mystery novel that is frequently a good story, that is an easy read, but not really very good literature. In this particular book Lynley is mostly absent, but his detective Barbara Havers is center stage.

The Ms. George is in a class with Ruth Rendell and the late PD James.

The book is excellent, like all of its predecessors because Elizabeth George knows how to spell-bound her readers.
In this book Barbara is on her one solving a mystery among Pakistani immigrants into a seaside resort town in England. Some potential readers might think that Barbara Havers can't manage alone. Ah, but they are very wrong, as Barbara shows more depth and real-life than the classy and superficial Lynley.
The book is stunning, and you can believe me because I've read them all!! It is however not recommendable to read af the first of all the writers novels, as she makes several references to the things from previous episodes and novels and to her partnership with Lynley. The reader will understand those references much better if (s)he has read at least one of the previous books.
In Denmark (where I come from) we love her books and Elizabeth George is one of the most popular criminal writers from USA.

This is my first E. George novel. I liked reading it very much, because it is the first mystery novel I have read in a long time which combines social issues(like racism) with well developed characters and plot. I read the entire novel with great interest and my admiration of the writer increased with every page I read. The last part of the novel was somewhat less than believable, and one could feel that the writer was trying too hard to make the ending suspenseful till the last page. But overall, the story and the way it is told is way ahead of the rest of its genre.

A thoroughly enjoyable book. George's characters are vivid and you either root for them, dislike them intensely, feel sorry for them etc. the point being that none of them leave you cold. Great ambiance and a good plot also help. This type of literature is meant for entertainment. I am greatful for books that can be as entertaining as Elisabeths Georges books are without ever insulting your intelliganc

What an introduction to the formidable Elizabeth George! No novel I've ever read delivers so much substance, character revelation and breadth of humane vision than "Deception on His Mind".
Barbara Havers is a marvel of courageous truth-telling. Worth the whole trip.
After I've read all of George's works I'll give up reading fiction. Everything else is from a lesser planet.

752 pages seemed daunting, but this book was one of those "cannot put it down" mystery whodunits. Nicely involved murder with character development both surprising and appreciated. After the first dozen pages, Inspector Lynley was there only in the thoughts of Detective Barbara Havers, so concentrating on her development as a character was solidly entertaining. The analysis of Pakistan and English interactions (set in late 1990's) was obviously well researched and nicely explained.

Ms. George breaks away from her usual London-based, Lynley-centric mysteries to concentrate on Barbara Havers (no Lynley after page 1). It is a long and rambling book that might have been better served by a bit more editing. The racial element adds a compelling twist to the whole enterprise, and the pay-off (the actual solution to the crime) is palid enough to make the reader think that perhaps the mystery has taken a backseat to the psychological twists (and twisted psychology) offered in this one.
If, as does Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, Ms. George adapted a different pen-name for a different style of book, this would be one of her Vine-type creations, much more about tone, psychology and human frailty than, say, her previous kidnapping novel, which is a strong 10.

Exceptionally well crafted novel centered around Sgt Barbara Havers. Complex murder mystery plot, with many threads of interpersonal, emotional, cultural, and political issues and dynamics woven together.

Elizabeth George's "Deception on His Mind" should get an award for "The largest number of unlikeable characters ever assembled in one book". George's poison pen especially drips with venom whenever she deals with gay character Cliff Hegarty, who comes off as being vile and despicable and disgusting. She manages to dredge up and use most of the pejorative words for "homosexual" again and again, without ever once using the neutral word "gay". An irrational hatred based on a person's innate, biologically determined sexual orientation seems to permeate this book. Time after time we are treated to the typical ultra-conservative, right-wing religious condemnation of gays. Yet George never mentions the fact that there are several progressive main-stream religions that welcome their gay brothers and sisters with love and acceptance - not hatred and condemnation. A book like this is especially rough on the gay teenagers who read it, because these youngsters have not yet developed the defense mechanisms necessary to cope with verbal gay-bashing. I have all of Elizabeth George's novels in my library, and I have read every one of them. I would never have expected this from her. It is a bitter disappointment.

This was the first book by Elizabeth George that I have had the pleasure to read. The novel keeps the reader guessing until the very end. Various entangled plots run throughout the length of the book, only to be resolved in the last few chapters. Though a bit lengthy, the heavy cast of characters serves to embroil the reader in a true "whodunnit" mystery.

As a longtime fan of thriller/mystery/suspense novels, this book didn't entrance me as my favorite authors seem to captivate my attention. The characters all seem too flat, no development at all...I liked the unexpected revelations that Barbara and Emily discover, but the reader doesn't really seem to be pulled along the plot...I think one of the problems is that there were so many characters to handle that the reader doesn't really get to know who Barbara is...
In comparison to my favorite authors who include John Sandford, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Patricia Cornwell, Elizabeth George is an ok read, but not spectacular.

The book was too long. Better editing would have helped some, but the characters were a drag. Though I finished the book, about half way through I frankly didn't give a dam. P.D. James has spoiled me

From her first book, Elizabeth George has consistently written books that are more than "mysteries." DECEPTION ON HIS MIND is no exception. The characters are fully developed, the plot lines are complex and interesting and you do not want the books to end. Please, please Ms, George, do not turn into a Patricia Cornwell and sell out to success. Keep the books as they are now--and keep them coming

Elizabeth George never fails to intrique. She supplies all the clues but encourages the reader to arrive at the wrong conclusions. As usual I was sure that the chief suspect of the police was the wrong one, and I was equally sure that I had targeted the guilty party. -- However, the sure-fire guilty party changed with every chapter! I can't wait to start another George book and try my sleuthing skills again.

I resisted reading this book for some time. Havers is not one of my favorite characters. But having read this, I would like to see more of Sgt Havers in the future. I like the character development and the relationships that developed as the story progressed. Very well done.