What Came Before He Shot Her (Inspector Lynley Book 15)

I love Elizabeth George and always look forward to her next book; however "What Came Before He Shot Her" was a great disappointment. Interest story line and glimpses of life in the stums of London, but the combination of lower class British usage/gang slang/black dialogue made the book hard to read. But, the ending did answer the who and why questions of the on-going Inspector Lynly series.

i continue to read her Lynley series and they continue to disappoint me. Until you get to the very last pages of the book there is no Lynley even mentioned Not only that but read the description of this book on her site and you know how it ends The only reason I keep purchasing her novels and therefore giving her money is its a bad habit that I need to end

If you are looking for a typical Inspector Lynley/Barbara Haver story, this book will not provide it. However, I have not been able to get the characters George presents in this story out of my mind.

I disagree with some of the more critical reviews of the book. To me, the characters are certainly not one-dimensional and their story is compelling. My heart ached for this dysfunctional family that no one seemed to be able to help.

Sad, but a very good read.

With her usual expert crafting, Elizabeth George follows up the tragedy of WITH NO ONE AS WITNESS by telling the story of the perpetrator, a child murderer, in a way that does not excuse or pander but imparts understanding. Highly recommended for true crime and mystery buffs, as well as those affected by violent crime.

I am disappointed at her work. Others were great detective pieces. I kept waiting in this work for something to happen, I'm 100 pages until the end and it isn't so suspense filled. It seems more soap than mystery. I'm disappointed

The book is well researched in terms of how ordinary , sometimes struggling Brits with a Caribbean background love and live. And how some of them get caught up in small crime and gangs . But eventually I found the detail tedious and impatiently skimmed the pages until finally I got to the part that deals with The title of this book. I'm sorry I bought the book because there are other things I could've read in the same time and more importantly it's not really a Linley mystery in the strictest sense.

A wonderful twist in the murder of Lynley's wife, a good Helen in the middle of a vengeful plot. Most characters are survivors of life's atrocities that in the end catch up with them. If only it weren't true! Unfortunately it's true.

but an excellent read. I enjoyed the character development and found it to be very realistic. Ms. George has shown herself to be one of the best at writing psychosocial fiction.

I admit to hoping for a glimpse of Havers and especially Lynley somewhere in the book -- and certainly hope to see another Elizabeth George book again soon.

What a shameful waste of paper, this writing falls so far short of George's ability as a novelist, one would wonder if she really was at the pen. Boring, beginning to end, not enough oomph to keep awake for an entire chapter if used for bedtime reading. London slang was never this uncolourful until George's coined gutterspeak blossomed in triplicate monotonously throughout the book. Moving to Seattle must have put the author into a depressed mode, thumbs down, moving on to someone consistent after this disaster.....

This read went beyond my expectations. I was so deeply engrossed in the families plight it was as if I knew them . I would have given 6 stars if I could have. This book was so deep it haunts me on reflection .

After the events of her previous novel, With No One As Witness, I was fairly upset with author Elizabeth George for what she had done to a character that was appealling, likeable, and then was suddenly yanked out of the series in a brutal way. For quite some time afterwards, there was much mumbling on the fan sites about the situation, and would it signal the end of the series about Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers?

Set within the world of London's poorest classes, What Came Before He Shot Her tells the tale of the Campbells, three children of mixed race heritage, and without any hope of a future. Their father was killed in a senseless street shooting, and their mother has vanished -- somewhere. Now their grandmother, Glory, has packed up the only home the children have known, and promises that things will be better in faraway Jamaica, where her husband George has been deported to.

It is, of course, a lie. Glory drags the three -- Ness, Joel and Toby -- across London to another neighborhood just as dingy and appalling as the one that they have left, and abandons them on the doorstep of their Aunt Kendra, sister of their father. And Kendra isn't too happy to see them either; her life has been marginally better than the children, but not by much. All she sees with the arrival of the trio is more work, and a responsiblity that she has no desire to take on. While Joel is a quiet cautious child, his two siblings are trouble from the get go. Teenage Ness is pretty, but she's quickly sliding into a mess of drugs, prosititution and theft, and Toby -- well, no one seems to know what is going on with Toby except that he seems to be in a world of his own. Kendra certainly doesn't have the skills to cope, and the reader can easily see that catastrophe is looming.

Still, she tries to hold her sudden family together, despite the poverty, the presence of a local gang leader with the nickname of The Blade, and the fact that Ness can not, and will not, even try to fit in. A good portion of the novel is taken up with Ness and her friends, Tash and Six, as they skip school, do drugs and sex, and decide to take the next step in a life of crime, that of mugging to get the cash and mobile phones that they crave.

Poor Toby, lost as he is in his own world, is an automatic target for the neighborhood bullies and thugs, and Joel tries hard to protect his little brother. He's not adverse to using his fists, and can talk as tough as the next. But it isn't enough as we see, and it forces him to make an alliance with a monster.

To balance the prevasive evil, there's a few who do care and try to help -- Ivan Weatherall, an adult at the school who helps Joel find his poetic voice, and for Ness, the surprising figure of a Pakistani woman who runs a child care centre. Even Kendra finds a savior in Dix D'Court, a strapping young bodybuilder who is very attracted to her. But will it be enough to stop the tragedy that is rushing towards them all?

Elizabeth George uses her skills at psychological drama, insight and drawing verbal pictures of people caught on the edge. But fans of Lynley or Havers will be very disappointed at all -- Lynley appears not at all, and Havers only in the final few pages of the story. There's very little police procedural in this, without the a mystery to really involve the reader -- and that is one of the great pleasures of her novels, to get to follow along as a very detailed story is gently tugged and unraveled.

Instead, I was left with the impression that Elizabeth George was playing at becoming the Dickens of the twentieth-first century. The misery in this one grinds on and on, without any glimmer of contrast or brightness to relieve any of the true awfullness of it all. The dialog throughout is crude and written in a phoenetic cant that is barely understandable, and very unschooled. While I can appreiciate a touch of that now and then in a book, having the characters constantly speak in slang is rough going.

Finally, we realize that the entire novel is pretty much just the previous one, told from the point of view of the criminal that appears in the end of With No One As Witness. While you might not have to had read the earlier work to understand the nuances, it's still pretty much clear that we're not going to be seeing the stories of either Lynley and Havers or any of their associates moving forward any time soon. And that is the real draw of Elizabeth George's novels, is that she is able to contrast Lynley and Havers so well, and the reader has the security of knowing that these two people will hold onto the practice of doing what is right nearly all of the time.

Sadly, this is a novel that really goes nowhere at all. The level of human misery in this one is so pervasive and all-encompassing that there is little to give the reader an urge to grind on through the nearly six hundred pages of story. I was so relieved to have the damn thing end that even the tragedy of the Campbells couldn't stir me very much. In short, it's a book that takes forever to get to where it is going, and there's not much to entertain you along the way, and so, I can't recommend this one. One of the reasons that I read novels is a form of escape, I want to know that somewhere there is a place where there is hope, and that one aspect of keeping human spirit alive is completely gone in this novel, even when there is a chance of it, it is all too quickly snuffed out. In terms of writing, it's good, and it's the only thing that keeps this book from being hit with a two star rating from me. It is also very unlikely that I will be rereading this one either, so overall, this one is a failure on all counts.

Not Recommended.

Elizabeth George gives readers a beautifully written, relentlessly morose tale of revenge in her newest book set in the mixed-race world of London's Jamaican-white slums. A gang leader sets out to destroy a family headed by Aunt Kendra, who unwillingly has wound up with her sister's three children. Kendra has no idea a vendetta has been launched, nor has she any idea of what the three children are up against. Fifteen-year-old Ness is lost in her world of sex and drugs. Toby, the youngest, is lost in his inner world of fantasy and refuge. Twelve-year-old Joel is partially aware of the dangers as he attempts to save them. Of the family, friends, and government-agency officials who come in contact with Joel and his family, those who know don't care, and those who care don't know. Those very few who both care and know are as out-matched as is Joel in experience and ability. Their faulty reasoning and logic only serve to worsen the family's lot. Author George gives us episode after episode of Joel's struggles and defeats in this gloomy alternate view of the killing of Inspector Thomas Lindley's wife. This ever-prevalent gloom is both the strength and weakness of George's book: strength in that the narrative is so clearly and painstakingly detailed; weakness in that so many pages of failure and hopelessnes is a hard reading slog.

As for author George, she is well positioned for the future: free to continue with the Lindley chronicles in some format or free to move on. Or both.

This is the only Elizabeth George novel I did not like. I had grown to admire and like Helen , especially because she made Thomas so fulfilled and happy. I did not see the crime coming, so it was like jumping into a pond of ice water. I do hope and pray a later book will clear up the mystery of who the killer really was.

The book is fascinating and beautifully written, of course, but not as enthralling as the inspector lynley/Barbara Havers series -- I actually have put it down, rather than my usual pattern of being totally unreachable when the new mystery appears!

First, it must be acknowledged that this is NOT an Inspector Lynley mystery. It involves the shooting of Inspector Lynley's wife, Helen, but Inspector Lynley does not participate in this novel, nor is the novel a mystery. This is a psychological novel that highlights the artistic qualities of Elizabeth George, to delve into the psychologies of her characters, as superbly depicted in her Inspector Lynley mysteries.

This novel deals with the three, mixed-race, Campbell children: Vanessa (Ness) age 15, Joel age 11, and Toby age 7. They are dropped off by their grandmother at their aunt Kendra's, where they are left to struggle to survive on their own. From the beginning, it is known that Joel will be involved with Helen Lynley's murder. However, the real depth of the novel lies in the events that the three children and their aunt experience, before the actual murder.

Kendra and the three Campbell children live in one of the poorer sections of London. However, these events could have taken place in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, or any other major city where race and poverty are central to one's daily existence. George is at her top form in revealing the thoughts and emotions of her characters. Anyone reading this novel should experience the desperation and conflict involved in surviving in an inner city environment where every day is a challenge in dealing with family, friends, and enemies.

Don't buy this novel if you are expecting another Inspector Lynley mystery. However, if like me, you have come to treasure Elizabeth George's ability to probe the very thoughts and emotions of her characters, it is a must read.

Unreadable. If you're an Elizabeth George fan, save your money. I hope she got some personal satisfaction/benefit/literary stretch from this because that would be the only thing that might make the destruction of trees for its publication somewhat justifiable.

Yes, I too, was disappointed that this book focused on what came before...I was going to be petulant and not read it either. But George is a wonderful writer. This book is compelling and disturbing and is a very good read. Don't be fooled by the negative reviews. The subject matter may not be what George fans want, but she succeeds neverthless. And it is a wonderful set up for the next Lynley/Havers book.

Tremendous writing in terms of character development, themes and sense of place. A brave and welcome departure from the mystery genre. Great social and psychological drama. She's not dumbing down her writing as some authors are, and her work keeps getting better. She's fascinating to hear talk about her writing process at book signings.

Paul

Could Elizabeth George possibly address any issues more depressing and with no possible solutions. It seems like she had to cram every horrible social problem known to man in this book and inflict it on one family. This book was so depressing and dull and I am very wary of what George will produce next.

It is really distressing to see readers demanding that a writer like George must only write stories with her continuing characters. Think how boring that must get for the writer. Is she not allowed a deviation from the standard storyline? Some of you remind me of the character in Misery, who mained the writer for killing off the heroine. When Helen Lynley was killed we knew it was a 12 year old boy but nothing about why it happened. I don't think that George is excusing the killers, nor do I think she has made them overly sympathetic. Sorry folks, but poverty does breed crime and this well-written tale simply looks at some examples of how wrong things can go even when the people involved are not all bad. I enjoyed this sad tale, even knowing how it would turn out. And just because George is not poor and lives in America, she is not excluded from writing a well researched story about a side of life few of us want to acknowledge, much less do anything about.

What a let down when I started reading this book, I had been waiting months for the new Elizabeth George novel with Inspector Lynley and all his sidekicks. What do I get? A lesson in class and race and why the disenfranchised have a reason to kill.

Elizabeth George continues to be a favorite writer of mine. This latest book fleshed out a previous character, and I loved it! Wish she could write faster....I also love the London settings, they make me wish I were there.

My major objection to Elizabeth is that she is wordy, but in this book that is an asset. This is a

masterful expose of the mixed races sub culture of London. How she got the vernacular so

natural is remarkable. The inconclusive ending might lead to a further investigation by the Yard

into who actually killed Helen?

I've read all of the Inspector Lynley series & thought this one (which is NOT Lynley & Havers) might give some insight as to why Ms. George wanted to have Helen Lynley murdered. However, the book is extremely dreary, the characters are poorlly drawn & have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I felt no connection with them & didn't care what might or might not ahppen to them, so after about 100 pages I gave up & returned the book to the library. What a disappointment - I would give this one minsur 5 stgars if I could. Don't waste your time on it.

This book is billed incorrectly. It is a gripping novel about a mixed-color family with roots in Jamaica who live in a ghetto neighborhood in London. It is heart wrenching and deep, and pretty quickly can turn your heart into an aching mass of jelly. I read lots of books like these while working on my degree in social science. You can end up a sobbing and mewling basket case.

I usually only offer a review on the store if I have purchased through the store, but I wish there had been a warning on the front of the book. After about 1/5 of the way through the book, I read the cover jacket again to see if there was not some big publishing mistake. This should not be classified as mystery. It was good enough to be social study, except for the fact that the author is a privileged white lady with no given background in social work. I was amazed at what seemed like authentic ghetto speak. What did E. George do...go undercover and hang out in those neighborhoods?

Oftentimes before I read a book (even from the library) I will go to the store reviews to get a sense of what I have chosen. This time I thought I had a mystery which involved Scotland Yard, as it suggested on the jacket. As others have said, that's not what this is. If you want a picture of what life is like in the underworld in London, within a family who is trying hard to make good sense of their existence, read this. If that's what you want, this might be a 4 or 5 star book...but I cannot rightly say because I cannot finish it. Too sad.

Elizabeth George’s novel What Came Before He Shot Her is well-written. There is no doubt about that. I just didn’t like the story. It is too real and too dark for me.

George used an omniscient, all-knowing narrator in this third-person account of what happened to the three Campbell children: Vanessa 15, Joel 12, and Toby 8, and their poor unfortunate Aunt Kendra who tries desperately to help them. But as a writer, I know the main characters can’t make the better choice or there would be no story, no conflict. What Came Before is rife with conflict. And as a reader, I cared too deeply about what happened to them, which didn’t help me sleep at night.

Story, for me, is an escape from the trials of life. I understand that in real life the horrors depicted in What Came Before He Shot Her can happen. That’s why I usually read upbeat fiction, to have a positive—or happy—outcome. Because in life, I realize it can’t always be that way.

Elizabeth George’s novel What Came Before He Shot Her is a great book to study the cause and effect chain of events in story. The main characters have a character arc all their own. They grow and change, except for Toby, who I believe is special needs. But it is dark. Read at your own risk.

.Elizabeth George has had a successful career with her novels centering on the London police and particularly the career of Thomas Lynley. There are twelve Lynley novels before this one, and readers delight in the intricate detailing of crime and the procedures used by the police to solve them, as well as the relationships Lynley builds both professionally and personally. At the end of the twelfth book, With No One As Witness, George creates a stunning climax when Lynley's wife is murdered on their doorstep. Readers were aghast, unsure why an author would write such a dramatic and unexpected conclusion.

In her thirteenth novel, What Came Before He Shot Her, George explores the societal factors that inevitably led to the murder. Three siblings are left with their grandmother when their father is killed and their mother hospitalized for mental illness. Tiring of her responsibility, the grandmother leaves London for Jamaica and dumps the children on their aunt. Kendra, the aunt, has no idea what to do with these children. Ness, the sister, is fifteen. Her oldest brother, Joel, is eleven and the youngest boy, Toby, is seven. Each has multiple issues that precludes a successful life for them.

The book follows the children's lives as they attempt to adjust to Kendra's house. Ness immediately moves into the street life, mixing with girl gangs and hoodlums. Joel is determined to take care of Toby, who has mental health issues of his own, but is unable to carve out a place of safety for them. He is slowly drawn into the life around him, where individuals are forced to join one side or the other for protection.

Many of George's fans were lost when she made her decision to have Inspector Lynley's wife killed. They couldn't bear to revisit the pain that decision brought to them and were in no mood to hear about any explanation. Yet George forged ahead and wrote this book to explain the reasons that crime occurs and how society fails those least able to make their own way in the world. This book is recommended for fans of George's prior novels and will help them reconcile her decision and enjoy the series again.

Holy moses! This book was an incredible departure from the formula for Ms. George and WOW is it good! Let me preface this review by saying that I also am an avid general fiction reader in addition to devouring mysteries. This book is NOT a mystery, and I wish the reviews here would point this out rather than slam the book for being "boring." If one isn't interested in character studies and other forms of writing, then please simply state so rather than trashing the book. The book is excellent. Unfortunately it's miscategorized, and as a result it's getting poor reviews because those looking for an orange aren't happy with an apple, no matter how delicious it is. So first and foremost: do not buy this book if you are only interested in a whodunit. You won't be pleased at all. If you are interested in mainstream fiction as well as mysteries, this book is a gem.

My first thoughts about this book while I was reading it were that Elizabeth George's interests and writing have outgrown the formulaic drama of mystery fiction. She is excellent at that genre, and particularly so when she started, but writers are artists, and a lot of artists continue to grow and challenge themselves throughout their growth and their art reflects it. It would seem as if Ms. George may have started to feel stagnant in her genre, which would explain a lot about the degradation of some of our favorite characters in the series- almost like a passive aggressive expression of frustration - make your characters complelety unlikeable and kill them off, rather than start writing different kinds of books, exploring and expanding in her artistic development, while also churning out a book for her established fans every few years. But hey, not everyone is perfect. So although painful and dissapointing to see our favorite characters dissapear or change, what is emerging is really, really good, and I wish they would market her books properly to reflect this change so that they'll reach the right audience.

Anyway, about the actual book- it is a very detailed, explorative, and comprehensive portrayal of a young man who commits a criminal act, and the profound impacts of the sociological, psychological, and economic factors which contextualize his development and actions. It has a *lot* of political implications in my opinion, most importantly on the nature of a crime, and why the precursers of crime are so important to evaluating the criminal who committed it. Understanding a crime, and the criminal who committed it, would benefit both the community affected by the crime as well as the effectiveness of the response by the criminal justice system. Can somone be rehabilitated? Will the punishment s/he receives be appropriate and reformative, or even more detrimental to his psychology and character? The role of forgiveness is essential to processing and moving on from a crime, by the community, the family of the criminal, and by the criminal himself if he is to redeem his life and make a difference to himself and others in the aftermath. Though this book doesn't discuss this aspect, but it precipitated my awareness of how many lives can be unravelled and even destroyed long after a crime is commited, and how fully understanding a crime (and being able to forgive it) could possibly prevent some of the destruction.

I came to this book with only one preconceived notion, and that was that I liked the author's work. I was not expecting it to have anything to do with Lynley, so I was not disappointed as some other reviewers were. I also will not, like other reviewers did, give away any of the plot or the ending, but I will say that I really enjoyed the read, and felt that I got to know the characters and would be sad to have to leave them when the book ended. The ending came to me as a complete surprise, and although I of course would have liked it to go on, the end was satisfying in a way few books are. No "yeah, but" or "hey, wait a minute" afterthoughts which so often come to me a few hours after finishing a book. I thought it was one of the best books I have read in years, and highly recommend you stop reading other spoiler-filled reviews and get the book and decide for yourself.

The pair are *With No One As Witness* followed by *What Came Before He Shot Her*. Casually looking for some decent mystery to lose myself in, I picked up and read *With No One As Witness*, with its shocking events, and then *What Came Before He Shot Her* right afterward. I was truly amazed by this pair and cannot praise the author enough for her skill at writing the stories from both sides. I'd been a so-so Elizabeth George reader till then, and this pair made me a true Elizabeth George fan -- I say this who does not really like the character Inspector Lynley. George's books are not light, easy reading, but they are very worthwhile.

In Elizabeth George's last book her character Thomas Lynley's wife Helen is killed in a random murder. This is a devastating event for George's faithful readers, since their love affair and marriage is a lovely part of her Inspector Lynley series. This book, which explains how this tragedy happens, features an entirely different set of characters. It is the story of the boy who killed her and his hopeless, unhappy life. It is really an examination of the squalid, discrimination-filled lives that many of the immigrants living in England suffer. The boy and his dysfunctional family are at the mercy of vicious gangs, rapists, police brutality, and a social network that that doesn't exist for unwanted people of color. This book should be read, not as a part of George's Lynley series, but as a devastating critique of the way a society based on class treats those on the bottom rung, and their struggle to have any kind of meaningful life.

This book does not have any happy endings for any of the characters, but it unerringly shows how people who have no good choices can end up making the very worst ones, not even realizing when they make those choices how far astray they are. In that way it is a powerful, true story that is heartrendingly real.

WCBHSH is not a Lynley/Havers novel. Once past that stumbling block, this novel deserves a fair look at it for what it is. Though reviewed as a scruffy, dark novel about a dysfunctional family, there really is no family present in this plot, not in the real sense of the word. Rather, it is about three psychologically fragile children trying to survive in a world that has given them nothing but life itself. Dumped on their aunt's doorstep in one of London's most dangerous neighborhoods, they cannot rely upon her to provide much more than food and shelter. Love, trust, and a sense of safety are qualities that they never had a chance to develop. None of them is capable of accepting a helping hand even when repeatedly offered. Eleven year old Joel is the rock of this little trio, and although he tries valiantly to protect his brother and sister, and even his woefully inadequate "aunty", naturally he is doomed to fail. The title of this book is literal - it is the story of what happened to this child as he is coerced into doing things that are abhorrent to him and that destroy his soul long before he can reach adulthood. At bottom, this is an existential piece that can open the reader's eyes to the harsh circumstances that mold the lives of so many underprivileged, neglected children. It is the anatomy of a crime. It is a look into the mind of the "criminal". What Came Before He Shot Her is not fun, but it is skillfully crafted. It's a shame to miss out on a very good novel because of the absence of Lynley.

So Disappointed! This book has an interesting story but the cover noted it as another of the Lynley novel. Well, after reading the first 60 pages I started wondering where this story goes. At the very end of the book, last page or two there is a mention of Barbara and Nata, no Lynley that I could find. I didn't get the book to read a story absent my heroes and their interactions! I realize why the book was written (and I'm not putting out a spoiler here) but I felt very cheated because personally I don't think this novel was the least bit necessary and I really didn't enjoy reading it.

I've read all of the Inspector Lynley series & thought this one (which is NOT Lynley & Havers) might give some insight as to why Ms. George wanted to have Helen Lynley murdered. However, the book is extremely dreary, the characters are poorlly drawn & have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I felt no connection with them & didn't care what might or might not ahppen to them, so after about 100 pages I gave up & returned the book to the library. What a disappointment - I would give this one minsur 5 stgars if I could. Don't waste your time on it.

Wow. That was my first reaction on finishing this incredible book.

Like many other fans of George's Lynley/Havers series, I was shocked when she killed off Thomas Lynley's wife Helen for no apparent reason. This story doesn't provide a reason - indeed, there are several questions left unanswered - but what it does provide is a detailed and searing look into the background of the supposed shooter. And yes, I said "supposed". I'm not going to insert a full spoiler here; I'll just leave you with that tantalizing hint.

What this story also provides is proof - as if any were needed - that George can venture into fields other than mysteries and (British) police procedurals and still spin a ripping good yarn. In some respects the story of Joel Campbell is rather typical. He's the product of a broken home, with a mother in the psych ward, a little brother who's not altogether there, and an older sister who is nowhere near as violent as Aileen Wuornos but whose sexual proclivities make Wuornos look like a pansy.

The tale starts with the children's grandmother dropping them off at their aunt's flat - she's running away from them and from her responsibilities as their unofficial guardian, and thus begins the tale of their downfall.

There are, as I said, some unanswered questions. We see the killing of Helen Lynley from Joel's point of view, but we still don't understand the why. It's implied that there is some kind of connection between Thomas Lynley and the criminal known as the Blade, but George doesn't explain or give any hint as to the nature of that connection and as far as I remember the Blade isn't mentioned in the "prequel" ("With No One as Witness").

Perhaps she'll provide an explanation someday, but this is still a well-written and extremely interesting look into life on the other side.

This work is so extremely well-written that even though the subject matter and the characters absolutely break your heart with the inevitability of the sorrow in the harsh environment in which the characters are enmeshed, you can't turn away.

Ms. George takes a small, broken family who would be so unattractive and unappealing in the hands of anyone less skilled, and makes you care deeply for each and every one. You swiftly have your heart stolen by the children, the aunt, the boyfriend, and you can't get it back. You hope and hope and hope that they will grab the rare golden threads that are tantalizingly glimpsed, but you know, from the prior Lynley volume, that tragedy is waiting without blinking.

But you care so much, you come to believe in the innate goodness of the characters' hearts, that you never let go of the hurtling ride all the way to the end hoping for a miracle because you can't believe what or how the end result will come to be. You hope for Helen, because you've loved her so long in the many Lynley stories, and you hope for these children that you must love in this story.

Yes, it is dark and frequently joyless, but it makes you want to gather them up and pull them away to somewhere a better chance in life will save them... and you can't, so you just accompany them all the way down.

Given the way the things 'go down', I dearly want a follow-up story that shares "what next?" as it is too cruel to the characters and the reader who cares not to know. I hope Ms. George will eventually wind this link back into a future Lynley novel. Now that he has started to come a bit out of the dark fog in which he was wandering in "Careless in Red", surely he must at some point want to understand the young boy accused of taking Helen away.

I thoroughly enjoyed "What Came Before He Shot Her" even as it tied my heart and feelings up into such sad knots. Maybe one needs to be ready to read something so hard to look at, but when you can, with a heart open to the resulting pain, it is waiting in all its dark, beautiful poetry.

I am a George fan though she sometimes disappoints me. I thought this book was excellent - one of her best. It didn't quite fit with the general tone of the series but as a stand alone book, I thought it was moving and sad. One of the things that stuck with me was the difference in social classes between the usual world George paints and the world depicted in this book. I felt society and the police (usually the protaganists in a George book) totally failed to protect or serve the characters in this book. The author draws the difference between the world the Inspector inhabits with its cocktails and tailored suits and classic cars and the world these characters inhabit, extremely well. I thought the book did exactly what the title implied, it explained what came before. This book stuck with me more than any of her other books.

"A wanton act of destruction" --- no, not a murder as such, but the way one of Elizabeth George's outraged readers described the unhappy ending of WITH NO ONE AS WITNESS, her second-to-last book: Helen, the adored pregnant wife of George's policeman hero, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, is gunned down on the doorstep of her London house. Mystery lovers are often habituated to tidy, let-justice-be-done denouements; sacrificing Lynley's nearest and dearest evidently violated some unspoken taboo.

When Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes (he was weary of turning out stories about the eccentric detective), his admirers were so upset that he had to bring Holmes back from the dead. George, in contrast, doesn't seem inclined to appease her fans: Instead, she takes an even bigger chance in her new book, WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER, telling the story behind Mrs. Lynley's murder.

The apparent culprit is 12-year-old Joel Campbell, a mixed-race boy from North Kensington --- a neighborhood where the police are not heroes but enemies; where gangs rule, drugs and sexual violence are endemic, and there is a constant struggle to survive. Joel and his two siblings --- Vanessa, his older, troubled sister, and Toby, a boy who seems to live in his own private world --- are all but orphaned (their father is dead, their mother in a psychiatric hospital; they've been abandoned by their grandmother and fobbed off on an aunt). Caught between painful memories of a one-time happy childhood and the perils of their current existence, they lurch helplessly down the road to disaster. Lynley, by the way, does not even appear in the book, and his police sidekicks, Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata, have only a walk-on --- another probable source of distress for George's devotees.

WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER is a gamble in two senses. George not only diverges from the traditional crime-solving formula, she is also a white, well-heeled American presuming to get inside the lives and heads of black, struggling Londoners. No matter how well intentioned, this effort will certainly be seen by some people as patronizing rather than courageous.

Racial politics aside, the book reminds me strongly of the nineteenth-century English social novels in which middle-class authors addressed the evils of early industrial slums and factories. Like Benjamin Disraeli's SYBIL, it emphasizes that rich and poor, although they ostensibly live in the same city, are really "two nations." (When Joel ventures into Belgravia, the elegant neighborhood where the Lynleys live, it is a world so alien it might as well be the North Pole.) Like Dickens's books, it is narrated by a lofty omniscient voice and features a large cast of characters. Striving, upwardly mobile Kendra Osborne, the children's aunt, is trying to establish a massage practice, and her boyfriend, Dix, is a prize-winning bodybuilder. Teenaged Vanessa is a furious victim of sexual abuse. There are Dickensian villains, too, evil geniuses of the street who take pleasure in manipulating and torturing boys like Joel and Toby. The do-gooders --- social workers, writing teachers, mentors --- are mostly white and usually impotent, foreigners who don't really know the language of the neighborhood or its people.

Speaking of language, the dialogue in this book is largely in the black argot of London. There is a point to this --- time and again George emphasizes that educated people like Kendra are perfectly adept at standard English (what the kids call her "Lady Muck" voice) and can pull it out on appropriate occasions (as when talking to the authorities). Thus the see-sawing between slangy and refined accents comes to represent a tension that dominates the whole book: the choice between sticking with the lousy deal that fate has handed you and trying to escape into a better, less limited existence. But the dialect gets to be a bit much after a while --- I felt as if I were listening to a minstrel show. George's decision to reproduce the vernacular may be phonetically accurate, but I'm not sure that it serves her book well.

The novel is absorbing, albeit overlong. The characters are engaging and poignant; you want to protect them, prevent their descent into crime, peril, loss of dignity and selfhood. In crossing class and racial lines, George is doing something most genre writers wouldn't: setting out to expose the ugly underside of offenses so politely solved in the usual English mystery. This is a more realistic book than the usual thriller insofar as it recognizes that most crimes originate in problematic socioeconomic conditions ("[T]here were forces at work far larger than the Campbell children or their aunt, making North Kensington a place unsafe for harbouring or advancing dreams") and it has no detective hero to hand the reader a neat explanation-cum-solution.

But I'm not sure we read mysteries for a picture of society as it really is. I think we read them for reassurance: Their conventions make us feel that crimes aren't just random acts but possess some logic, and that those who commit them can be unmasked and punished. And I missed Lynley and (especially) Havers. Part of the pleasure of a series is encountering familiar people, in particular the guiding presence of brilliant crime-solvers who give shape to the story and balance to the moral scales. Although I respect George for challenging herself and her readers, WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER is more a worthy experiment than a successful mystery.

Still, I appreciate a writer who surprises me rather than banks on the same bestselling blueprint. What in heaven's name will Elizabeth George do next? Your guess is as good as mine.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

There’s a remarkable resonance between George’s fictional portrait of an inner-city family and one just published by Robert Putnam (“Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis”, Simon & Schuster, 2015). Putnam is a sociologist not a novelist (the former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government). Let me quote from the review in the Economist (3/21/2015):
“Stephanie, a mother whose husband left her, is asked if her own parents were warm. ‘No, we don’t do all that kissing and hugging,’ she says. ‘You can’t be mushy in Detroit, you gotta be hard, really hard, because if you soft, people will bully you.’ Just as her parents ‘beat the hell’ out of her, so she ‘whups’ her own children. She does her best, but ambitions for them go little further than not skipping school, not becoming alcoholic and not ending up on the streets.”
The Economist’s reviewer is moved to conclude “Mr. Putnam’s … stories are heart-rending”. As is Elizabeth George’s.

This book was painfully tedious and dull. After about 200 pages (of 548) I closed the book and put it aside. Life is too short to read uninteresting books. I have read all of the other titles by Elizabeth George and this is the first that I've not loved. The only reason I didn't give this book just one star is because she obviously made an effort to step outside of the box on this one.

But, I just didn't care a whit for any of the characters nor what motivated them. There was no mystery and no entertainment value. If I want to read about the depressing underclass and a justification for murder because of societal wrongs, I'll pick up any city newspaper or read a non-fiction analysis by a bleeding heart sociologist. I read mysteries and thrillers for mind candy. There was no sugar in this book. It was just plain depressing and the dialect used was more annoying than colorful.

This is not to say that I do not appreciate more serious literature. I actually read "Crime & Punishment" and "Moby Dick" for pleasure. But, for me, there was no pleasure to be found in "What Came Before He Shot Her"; and I did have such high hopes.

I put off reading this one of the Inspector Lynley series and finally picked it up. I knew what I was getting sinto o I was not surprised. I have to be honest the darkness of the story and the language bothered me but soon I was drawn into the characters and their lives. This book deeply moved me as Ms George clearly showed the damage one can do to their family when choices are made either for selfish reasons, ill-informed reasons, or reasons one feels are the only option. I cannot say it was one my favorites of the series but for a read that delves into the ‘dark-side’ of what can happen when children are mistreated and viewed as baggage is truly eye-opening. - Karen C

This is an astonishingly racist book. Every single nonwhite person is described by their skin coloring and hair texture, and they are unappealing in either appearance or personality. The two major white characters, Ivan Weatherall and Fabia Bender, are noble benefactors of the poor black people who are mostly unappreciative recipients. The dialogue of the black characters is crude, poorly done, and painful to read. The black characters almost invariably put their own sex lives before any familial responsibilities, affection for their relatives, or other considerations. A far cry from the saintly white Helens and Deborahs and Thomases of Elizabeth George's usual novels. The author appears to have given up on the plot halfway through and the book hurtles to a close without much logic.

It is possible to have characters die; Dana Stabenow "killed" a very important figure and her series has continued well. Ms. George's decision to have Helen die at this point destroyed the series for me. I bought this book hoping for some redemption , but I could not even finish it. I have read two more of the series, and Lynley's behavior has been appalling. I hate that one of my favorite series has disappeared.

This was awful. I understand EG wanted us to view the life of the young man that took Helen and her unborn childs life. I thought we were going to read about his story in just a few chapters, to go on and on and on about it for the ENTIRE book, I was upset! If I want this type of depressing reading you can watch the TV, read the newspaper! To buy a book to sit and get lost in, this was horrible. The stero type of the ghetto, the entire story of hardship and life on the streets and the rules...no, this is NOT what I want to read about. I'm sorry that it happens in real life, I'm sorry that people do have hard lives, but to be subjected to it in a nonfiction book of characters that I enjoy, one of which was Helen, why did she have her murdered? Pregnant and murdered?! You feel like the characters are your old friends, you share the moments in their lives with them and to have this happen...why, I'll never understand. Again, if I wanted it to be real life, I could just pick up a newspaper. This book was the worst to read on my vacation.

If you read Elizabeth George because you like mysteries solved by Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, you should take careful stock before taking on What Came Before He Shot Her. This isn't another mystery of that sort in that series.

Instead, this is a modern version of Dickens in looking at the poor and downtrodden in London to see how bad genes, a horrible environment and rotten luck can combine to bring down those who mean well. In making that comparison, however, I must note that this book lacks the humor, wit and energy of Dickens.

In the books 548 pages, Ms. George does save some interesting surprises. But I didn't find those surprises worth wading through the first 250 pages to find.

So what is the book about? A grandmother has been raising three of her grandchildren after their father has been killed and their mother has gone off the deep end. As the book opens, the grandmother dumps the three on the doorstep of another daughter who is recently divorced while the grandmother heads off to Jamaica to be with her boyfriend. The oldest child is a fifteen-year-old, Vanessa (Ness), who finds herself fascinated by fashion, drugs and getting attention from men. Naturally, all that leads her into deep trouble. The middle child, Joel, is the surrogate father for his younger brother, Toby, who isn't quite right in the head. In suburban circumstances with a normal family life, Joel would have done well. But placed in an impossible situation, he finds that the family's troubles just escalate. As Joel tries to solve those problems, the problems just seem to get worse. Before the end of the book, Joel finds himself being drawn into the gang culture to achieve other purposes than furthering the gang.

To describe the book that way is to make it more interesting than it really is. I didn't find myself identifying with any of the characters. As a result, I found that I wasn't drawn into the story. I also found the dialect to be challenging to read and understand. I was tempted to stop before I got to the end. Having finished the book, I can see that that decision would have been a good one. This book just didn't work for me.

If you want to read a book about the problems of parentless children in London who live on the edges of society, this book may be of some interest. I suspect, however, that there's probably an autobiography of someone who really came from such a background that you can read . . . which would be more interesting and relevant.

A number of the store reviews condemn What Came Before He Shot Her as depressing (it is) and hard to read (it is, but I could not put it down), untrue to the Lindley/Havers series (it is, sort of). I loved most of the series but was very disappointed in With No One As Witness, predecessor to this book. The plot was stretched, the characters unbelieveable, and Helen's death seems just a mechanism to revive the series. The writing was forced and didn't flow. The reviews for Witness were pretty universally harsh and I suspect George wanted to remind her critics that she can write. And yes, she can write.

What Came Before He Shot Her is the story of a mixed race family in London projects, with much of it in dialect. Threealready damaged children are left with their aunt Kendra with no warning, and Kendra tries to cope with their many problems, their misery filled past and the reality of the streets, none of which she is ready for (although, on reflection, she should have been more street smart than she is). That any family could have such a history seems impossble, and the present is little better: gang rape, permanent emotional trauma, casual murder and madness are all part of their lives. Poverty is nearly the least of their issues. Everything in their lives wounds, and some thing maim. Every damage possible on the street is in here.

What does work in the novel is George's infallible grip of individual psychology. Somecharacters mean well but fail to understand despite the best of intentions and willingness to try, just exactly as we all sometimes try -- and fail -- to understand each other. In this setting,failure carries a very high price. None of the people who try to do good are clueness, and none are perfect. With one exception, none of the bad people are wholly bad, or had a time in their lives when it seemed they could be saved.

What doesn't work is that while the characters are believeable, only one or two come close to nestling in your heart, despite rooting for them. Some characters grow and some change but revenge, not redemption, survives. It is more a character study of the cost of powerlessness than it is a novel. It is a very well written one, which should exempt Ms. George from some of the criticism of 'Witness'. It is very densely plotted but perhaps no more than life is. But there is not a single line of humor or relief. There is no joy, hope or even a dream that does more than flicker for the characters we care most about, and that is what makes is more a polemic than a novel.

After all of this grit, I wonder is Lindley and Havers can come back at all.

Elizabeth George at her worst is still better than most other novelist. Sadly this is the worst book in the Lindley series. She is my favorite author, but she failed to hit whatever mark she intended with this story. Except for it's position within the timeline of the other works, the book could have been named "What Came Before She Learned to Write So Wonderfully".

Greg

It is, essentially, the anatomy of a murder. It describes the events leading up to the conclusion of E. George's last work "With No One As Witness", however the connection starts taking shape only towards the end of this book. As an E. George's fan and after having enjoyed all the Lynley/Havers mysteries, I was truly looking forward to find out some answers to the unexpected and tragic ending of her previous book, but the more I read, the more my eagerness became deflated. Simply, I was expecting a sequel, and this is not it.

However, my feelings were not hurt, so to speak, as it is also true that the more I read, the more I appreciated the story line, which I would define, at this point, essential for the understanding -or, at least, for coming to terms- with what had happened previously. This is a well written tale of a dysfunctional and troubled family in North Kensington, London. As usual, I have appreciated the author's ever-present deep psychological insights. Also, the inclusion of slang language dialogues, where needed, represents the main characters vividly and real-life-like. Some descriptions and situations resulting from impossibly hard and complicated circumstances are simply heartbreaking.

I would categorize this book almost as a statement about those people born into less fortunate families and backgrounds. It is a work of fiction and simultaneously a sad reminder of how things can go wrong in real life if proper support lacks in many ways, for reasons that may commonly be considered avoidable but are, more often than not, beyond control, despite the well meaning efforts made by most people (some families themselves, authorities etc.) to avoid degeneration and degradation.
Conspiracy of silence and exterior toughness as means of survival dominate the scene but, predictably, they do not lead to definite/satisfactory/proper solutions but rather contribute towards the perpetuation of a cycle hard to break. Easier said than done, for both fictitious and nonfictional events.

I am now most definitely anticipating E. George's next Lynely/Havers book, "Careless In Red", which should be the "real" sequel to "With No One As Witness".