For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley)

An excellent book, and also TV movie. It's great reading the Lynley series after having watched them on PBS. And I have the entire Lynley Series on DVD. One of the best mysteries series that everyone should read and watch!

I just think a mystery should stand on its merits without so much gratuitous sex. Her first books while there was some sex it did not permeate every page as this on did. I may quit reading this series if the continue in this vein.

Well, she is getting better, though the preposterousness of her one character jumping the class boundaries by marrying the forensic scientist in the series (Deborah wed. St. James) while having her own father, a servant, serving in the household seems patently absurd. Attempts at accents are gratefully less obtrusive. Her characterization of the students are a bit wooden. George needs an editor! Much too long of a build up, way too much drugstore pyschology and not enough focus on the main characters. Good at representing hopeless diagreement between two persons with differing perspectives, but a combined deus ex machina and some rather outlandish solutions to the crime in questions lets the reader down nonetoo easily. Enhhh...

I really like her writing. By the time I finished this book, I felt as though the characters had become an integral part of my life, Elizabeth George imbues her series characters (Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers) with such realism that they seem like old friends. She also explores the nature of the rest of the cast so that their characteristics are not just words on a page, but fully fleshed-out people. If you've not read her work before, get ready for a treat. Sometimes somber in content and development, but then, these are mysteries, and life and death are neither to be taken lightly.

After reading "With No One As Witness" and "Careless in Red" a couple of years ago (both great books) I had to take a break from the Inspector Lynley stories. Elizabeth George is one of the best writers for delving into the psyche of her characters (much like P.D James) and I guess I read those two books too close together and I invested too much of my own emotions during the reading. Now I find there are books in the series that I missed for some reason or another. I will go through the ones I missed in the order in which they were written.

While intelligent and well-written, this book has a couple of weaknesses which make it less than satisfying. This is my third Elizabeth George book, though, and I think some of my complaints are as much with her approach to crime fiction as they are with this particular book. The first problem, for me, is George's insistence on devoting entire chapters to her protagonists' dull and insipid personal lives. There were at least three chapters in this novel, for example, given over to the character Havers dealing with the question of whether to put her senile mother into a home or not. I'm sorry, but I'm just not that interested in that particular theme, and I'm definitely not interested in it turning up in my crime fiction --- and definitely not interested in it for chapters at a time. What a bore. I realize that as a thirty-something male, I may not be interested in the same themes Ms. George and other older women are, but even so, a paragraph on Granny here or there would be plenty. There is simply no need for entire chapters to be given over to her old bones, for this is crime fiction and there's a murder to be solved. Another problem with this novel is the absence of any real suspense or tension. Yes, we move closer and closer to the killer, but without any increasing suspense, danger or tension. It's all too flat. Finally, there is a serious problem with something George has the murderer do early on in the story (in order to make him/her not seem like the murderer) which the murderer would not have done if he/she were the murderer. I don't want to say too much about this, but to brief, one cannot be surprised by the presence of something one already knows is there.

Elena is a deaf college student at St. Stephens college of Cambridge University. She is murdered in the first few pages of the story, and the rest of the book is spent with Lynley and Havers trying to solve the case while bumbling through their own personal problems. Havers' mother is past the point of being able to live independently and Havers is struggling with putting her into a home. Lynley's beloved Helen has come to Cambridge to help her sister through post-partum depression and refuses to come home and marry Lynley.

At the heart of George's stories are the characters, deeply flawed and innately sinful. Lynley and Havers crackle with chemistry as usual and the rest of the players are equally entertaining. This is a story of unrealized dreams and guilt and revenge, and when you reach the end, you won't believe the killer or the motive.

The 5th in the Inspector Lynley mystery series. A Cambridge undergraduate is murdered, and the University wants New Scotland Yard to investigate because of town-and-gown conflicts that might affect the impartiality of the local police. Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers are soon on the scene, which looks at first well-suited to the kind of class conflict that Elizabeth George has developed so well in this series. Surprisingly, the plot goes in a completely different direction, involving the victim's dysfunctional family, at least three men who may or may not have been her lovers, competition for a prestigious academic appointment and a troubling picture of how universities-and families-deal with the disabled. While unraveling these various plot strands, Inspector Lynley pursues his complex relationship with Lady Helen Clyde, and Sgt. Havers must make a painful decision about how to care for her aging mother. The crime is of course solved, but the stories of the two detectives go on.

I love novels that do character development well. In the typical English murder mystery, the victim is usually a bloodless body which quickly disappears from the story after dying. A department store dummy would serve as well.

The beauty of For The Sake of Elena is that Ms. George does a thorough and fascinating job of describing the victim. Elena is an unusual character as well in that she lives somewhere between the hearing and the deaf world, finding solace in neither one. As a spirited woman with strong opinions, she finds herself able to twist the people and events around her into new directions.

In the background, Lynley uses Elena's death as a reason to pursue Lady Helen to Cambridge where she has gone to avoid him. His haunted pursuit of Lady Helen will ring strongly with those who love romantic novels. Barbara Havers also finds herself torn between pillar and post in trying to care for her aging mother while maintaining her career. Lynley and Havers soldier on through this complication in a way that will remind you of an old married couple dealing with adversity. It's solid stuff!

The book's major disappointment is the murder mystery. It's painfully transparent, and the red herrings are too obviously red to be any good.

Had Ms. George planned to write a romantic novel instead, this book would probably have worked much better as she magnificently displays all of the positive and negative aspects of attraction and romance for your full consideration.

I was hooked on Elizabeth George & her writing style from the first novel of hers I read. She's does so well with her two main characters of Lynley/Havers. They couldn't be more opposite, yet gel so well. Lynley being stoic, with Havers the sarcastic smoking humorist.
This book has the typical very descriptive dialogue Ms. George uses. It becomes a bit long at certain points, but the long description serves a definitive purpose in the story.
The author has the ability to weave her tale very intricately without losing sight of any part of her story. She incorporates detail, both dealing with the crime as well as personal struggles. Not many authors can go off on the tangents she does & still pull the story completely together. Lynley & Havers. Two hardened Brit detectives who also bare their very vulnerable personal lives. It's a masterful effort

Elizabeth George is an incredible writer that enfuses both her plots and her characters with realism. She constantly seeks to address the human condition, whether it is muscular distrophy, racism, senility or, in this case, deafness.
George specializes in giving us the thoughts of the characters and in this way drives the story forward. This novel is no different as we seem to slowly approach the heart of the story in a circular, closing motion. The insights into deafness and the many ways everyone reacts to it are simply phenomenal. This is a difficult book to read with a slight touch of amorality but in this case, the story and the writing appears "correct". Once again, the reader is slowly drawn into the web, entering yet another of George's mysterious and quixotic worlds. A winner

DCI Lynley and Sgt. Barbara Havers investigate the murder of the deaf daughter of a Cambridge don. Elizabeth George's villains are gleefully portrayed, and she manages to incorporate a considerable amount of nastiness and satire into an intricate and fascinating plot.

Like all Elizabeth George's books, this is beautifully written and the characters are wonderfully well developed. As the title suggests. the story centers on the first victim, the sexy, charismatic Elena Weaver. In a good mystery, the solution seems inevitable once it is revealed. In this case, the solution is grounded in a relationship that is difficult to believe and thus is ultimately unsatisfying. The pleasure in the book comes from the continuing developments in the lives of the main characters: the relationships between Thomas Lynley and Lady Helen Clyde and Barbara Havers and her mother. It would not be a good place for a first-time reader of this excellent writer to start.

I really liked this book - it's atmosphere and plot complexity. It is a bit wordy, however. And while I've enjoyed Elizabeth George's Lynley books, I couldn't help but see a synopsis of a later book in the series where the love of Thomas Lynley , Helen, dies. I really am tired of books where the author cannot stand to create happy marriage or relations for the protagonists.

Thoroughly enjoyable reading. It is 5th in a series, which I have been reading from the beginning. It would be possible to be read as a stand alone, but I don't think it would be as good. I like it for the characters as much as the story line, so need the development of them from the beginning.

Elizabeth George is a serious writer with serious ambitions. This book, centering around a mystery located in a college town and tackles no fewer than 5 complex issues involving interpersonal relationships. Ms. George spends time exploring the bonds between aging men and both their spouses and mistresses. George examines the bond between an artist and her finished product. She also tackles the bond between a mother and daughter. All this is accomplished while she centers the action of the book around a thorough exploration into the dynamic between daughters and fathers and step mothers.
There is passion and sex and murder and guilt.
I advise readers to start from the beginning of this series and read the books sequentially. This is a well written series and while she may fall a bit short of P D James she is well worth reading and enjoying.

When a deaf university student is found murdered on her daily run, the college is in an uproar. When Detectives Thomas Lynley and his partner Barbara Havers investigate they discover the various intrigues in the girl's life: she was pregnant and sexually involved with several men, including a professor. Meanwhile, her jealous mother and stepmother clash, and it is discovered that her father was having an affair. Red herrings abound in this satisfying, intriguing mystery, and the murderer is almost impossible to see coming.

George has done a marvelous job in bringing to life one of her minor characters, the eponymous victim. She almost becomes a prism by which we come to understand the other characters through their understanding of her. Everything is provided for the reader here: a complex plot, strong character development, and the best action scene that George has written so far. If you have been disappointed with any of the others in this series and have stopped reading them, you might want to pick this one up.

~ * ~ This is one of Elizabeth George's better novels. It's utterly absorbing, and the characters will evoke strong reactions- like or dislike, sometimes both! Fans of the winning combination of Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers will enjoy it, but you don't need to know the detectives to enjoy the story.
~ * ~ Elena, a young college girl at Cambridge, has just been killed. She was deaf. This was more than a "handicap"- it became a battleground for her, between the students who wanted her to become part of the "Deaf"- not trying to "fit in" by reading lips, etc; and her father, who tried to minimize her deafness- asking her to fit in with his life. ~
~ * ~, Elizabeth George is always strong in characterizations. She fills her story with complex characters, each of whom have weaknesses that we can sympathize with, and their own selfish and unpleasant motives. The conflicts between the characters are so well plotted; we are drawn into the story completely.
~ * ~ Unlike most of her mysteries, I started to see the conclusion. Elizabeth George usually blinds us to the obvious. She can weave a web so intricate and subtle, that despite all the clues we encounter, we don't ever "see" the solution until it is too late
. ~ * ~ My personal favorite of the Lynley/Havers series are" A Suitable Vengeance" which focuses on the early history of Lynley, Deborah and Simon; and "Deception on His Mind ", which focuses on Sergeant Barbara Havers, and an investigation which forces her to take a stand.
~ * ~

The only reason why I rated this book above average was due to George's attempt to update Sayer's masterpiece, Gaudy Night. Like "Gaudy," this book is set in an English university town, examines the rarefied academic atmosphere, and has the subplot of what marriage does to women. Unfortunately, Lady Helen is not Harriet, and Lynley is most definitely not Lord Peter. All the same, she should get credit for trying and, like all of her other books, this story is a fun way to spend a rainy day.

George's descriptions are vivid and fascinating. A university setting in Cambridge, England is where we find Elena Weaver, a runner in the Hare and Hounds club. While running on a foggy morning, Elena witnesses the murder of a young woman, but the murderer escapes into the foggy mist before Elena sees his face.
Taking place on a college campus and being considered more complicated than what the local cops or campus security can handle, Scotland Yard officers, Lynley and Havers are called in. Throughout the investigation the dark underbelly of the academic world is exposed. An intriguing read.

George writes that the artist is at the island, in the fog, and steps on an arm, first chapter. It isn't a dream, it is written that way. George doesn't stick with this, and that is troublesome. Also, the canvas was returned to the artist, but then somehow, without explanation, found at Elena's fathers house by his ex-wife. Again, not consistant, and yet very vital details to the story and to solving the murder. I have never read such inconsistancies in EG's books. Left me frustrated.

This was my first Elizabeth George book, and I enjoyed it. She is an intelligent writer, and she knows how to develop characters. I certainly want to read more of her books. The Cambridge touch here is a good one as is the artistic information that comes out during the course of the book. There are enough twists in the plot to keep most people guessing.

I'm finally calling it quits with this series. Only a devoted Harlequin fan would find the interminable Tommy-Helen, Simon-Deborah, Barbara-parents soap opera to be tolerable, much less engaging. What on earth does all of this sturm und drang have to do with the murder mystery genre? And the motive in this particular installment is so idiotic that one resents having had to tough it out in order to finish the book.
I like feeling entertained when I read a murder mystery. These books make me feel as though I need to take a bath.

FOR THE SAKE OF ELENA is my introduction to Elizabeth George and her detectives Lynley and Havers. I enjoyed the twists in the plot; as soon as I had made up my mind that a certain character was guilty, a new piece of evidence would be discovered to deflect suspicion. All of the suspects were introduced early enough for the reader to ponder the guilt or innocence of each. I look forward to more of George's work.

A very enjoyable read - E. George's mysteries are definitely a cut above the usual. I enjoy the dynamics of the relationship between Lynley and Havers. I did think that the relationship between Lynley and Lady Helen was a bit over-wrought and I did get tired of how much time was spent on it.

But overall, I enjoyed the book.

This book gives a new dimension to the term "bad". The characters are either totally improbable or equally totally unpalatable (some are both), their self-conscious soul-searching is fatuous and lacks any credibility or basis in real life. One can't help feeling that the "heroine" was an utter bitch who fully got what she derserved, although I doubt that this was the author's intention, and in the end it was, of course, all the men's fault.

The author knows zilch about the English upper classes. A gentleman with a monogrammed handkerchief, children of an upper class mother calling their aunt "auntie", to name just two of countless whince-making gaffes... It is incredible.

Pity one can't award "minus" stars!

Elena Weaver is dead, waylaid while on her pre-dawn run, smashed in the face with the ubiquitous blunt object, strangled with the tie from her hood and buried in a leaf pile by the river. Within three days of her murder and because of it, eight more people will be dead, in body or in soul. But four others will be saved, particularly in soul, including our Lynley, Havers and Lady Helen.

Elena was 20 years old at the time of her death. A second-year student, she was studying English at Cambridge University where her father is an eminent history professor on the very short list for a distinguished, coveted and lifetime Chair in his department. And it is only because of her father’s stature at Cambridge that Elena was still a student there.

Not only had her course work been sub-standard, her personal behavior had been more than questionable. So rather than dismiss her, in deference to her father, the university ordered an “action plan” implemented with multiple tutors and mandatory participation in several student unions. Her grades improved but her acting-out behavior simply went underground and essentially became the beginning of her end.

As with most catastrophes, the debacle leading up to and following Elena’s murder did not just happen overnight. It actually began twenty years earlier when Elena was born deaf to a set of parents who were not prepared to raise a deaf child. And they didn’t want a deaf child. They wanted a normal child, so they refused to allow her to learn sign language, forcing her to read lips and speak.

Fast forward five years to when the parents, in a loveless marriage from the first days, divorce, the father leaving in the middle of the night without so much as a hug for Elena, let alone a parting word. Fast forward another five years to the remarriage of the father and his attempt to reconcile with the child, not understanding the degree and depth to which his ex-wife has fueled Elena’s sense of abandonment and poisoned the child with her own hate.

Now, fast forward once again to the present, where Elena has been essentially forced by finances to attend her father’s school. Badgered to spend weekends at her father’s up-scale home, pressured into attending academic functions with her father, coerced into having virtually 24-hour supervision by tutors, she is even forced to do her daily running with her stepmother. And it is all for her safety and all in the name of love, so sayeth her father.

Elena was tired of being forced to be someone that she did not want to be and, in reality, truly could never be. She was deaf and no amount of lip reading or speech therapy or wanting her to be “normal” could or would ever change that fact. Childhood abandonment turned into adolescent hate, which turned into a young adult’s unwavering need to exact revenge against the father who had never once asked her what she wanted or what she needed.

So, honed into a sociopath from birth, Elena set in motion a long-term plan for revenge. She just didn’t expect that her plot would culminate in her death, rather than in her satisfaction. Of course, the immaturity and inexperience of youth and its attendant self-absorption rarely allows for the idea that someone else may be driven to play the same game, let alone be better at it.

While a murder has occurred and a murderer must be found, this is not totally a murder mystery. This is a psychological thriller based on the concepts of love, need and want. This is a story that pits selfishness against selflessness and against partnership.

This is a story about what a person wants and the actions he or she will take, the words he or she will say, to get what is wanted. It is a story about having no equal regard – consciously or unconsciously – for what another person wants or needs. It is a story of soul-level destruction and redemption. And this is a story where love, hate and revenge are only the outward ramifications of the fundamental need to take care of me, mine, myself and I.

Elizabeth George has produced an excellent literary mystery in this fifth entry to her Inspector Lynley series. It is a long book, 442 pages in the mass-market paperback version. And those pages are filled with a small typeface and lines spaced tightly together. George uses college-level vocabulary and a unique sentence structure so the read is made longer by the need to sometimes consult a dictionary or to re-read for clarity.

But, in the end, the unusual construct makes the storyline that much more intense. While the investigation by Lynley and Havers oft times seems slow and subdued and even appears to take second place to the various psychological subplots, this reader did not want to put the book down until the identify of the murderer was revealed. I simply could not let go until I knew exactly who had opened such an emotionally nasty and particularly heinous Pandora’s Box.