Technically, this fourth entry in the Inspector Lynley series is a prequel, taking place about a year before the events of the first novel, “A Great Deliverance.” Realistically though, this book is placed exactly where it needs to be in the series. After the bombshell that Deborah Cotter St. James laid on her husband, Simon, at the end of the previous book, Elizabeth George takes us back just far enough to get a real understanding of the original dynamics that led every character to that last point in time in that previous book.Although written in third-person, the primary POV in this novel is that of Simon St. James. A brilliant move on Ms George’s part, Simon is practically the only character, major or minor, who does not wish “a suitable vengeance” on someone. Quite frankly, he hates himself too much to hate anyone else.As for the others, Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth Earl of Asherton, has sought and achieved vengeance against his mother for fifteen years. At the age of 17, he caught her “in flagrante delicto” with his father’s doctor in the room next door to the dying man. For well over a decade, as the Earl, he has controlled both the property and the purse strings of the extremely large estate in Cornwall. Punishing her with long silences, few visits and absolutely no physical touch, Lynley will not even allow a single portrait or photograph of his father to be displayed at the estate as long as his mother chooses to reside there. Oh, yes – vengeance is mine, sayeth Lynley!Deborah Cotter has, in her mind and her heart, declared vengeance against Simon St. James. Even though Deborah is eleven years younger than Simon, they basically grew up together as her father was a highly placed employee in the wealthy St. James household. Deborah’s mother died when she was seven and Simon was critically injured and severely disabled in a car accident with Lynley shortly after the mother’s death. Despite their age difference, these circumstances bonded them together tightly. However, when Deborah was seventeen, Simon sent her to America to finish her college studies in photography, despite the fact that he loved her and she had professed her love for him. And for the last three years, Deborah has heard not one word from him, not a letter, not a phone call, nothing. But she has heard from Lynley, Simon’s best friend. He has called her often and has visited her in America multiple times. He has courted her slowly and dearly. She is no longer a woman scorned. She has become Lynley’s lover and she has accepted his proposal of marriage. Now, at age 21, she is returning to London and has made very specific plans as to how she will make Simon pay for the hurt he laid on her. Oh, yes – vengeance is mine, sayeth Deborah!Peter Lynley is Thomas Lynley’s younger brother. When their mother betrayed their father and then the father died, Thomas, in his hate and his grief, essentially abandoned his pre-teen little brother. With no one to guide him during these critical years of youth, Peter eventually descended through self-pity and depression into an addiction to cocaine. Thomas has the title, the estate, the money, the Bentley, the rank with Scotland Yard. And Peter hasn’t enough for his next fix. Hearing that Lynley is bringing Deborah to Cornwall to celebrate his engagement, Peter heads there too, with plans and announcements of his own. Peter is determined that Thomas will pay for all those years of abandonment, and not all the payment will be in money. Oh, yes – vengeance is mine, sayeth Peter!And let’s not forget Sergeant Barbara Havers. She is not yet Thomas Lynley’s partner. In fact, she does not even personally know him at this point. She just knows him by reputation – his title, his wealth, his position in the Yard, his purported sexual conquests. And for this, she despises him. When Peter Lynley falls afoul of the law in relation to a murder and her boss is assigned to the case, Barbara is ecstatic. She looks Thomas Lynley straight in the face and telegraphs her glee and her intentions. Oh, yes – vengeance is mine, sayeth Havers!Unfortunately, the dance card of hate is still not yet filled. One other character feels that he has been humiliated at the hands of his peers. And the plans for vengeance he sets in motion even transcend death.So where is the murder in all this soap opera? On or about page 115 of the mass-market paperback edition, we find the body of Mick Cambrey, with a fractured skull and sexually mutilated. He is a journalist, son of the Cornwall paper’s owner, the son-in-law of Lynley’s estate manager and reputedly a notorious womanizer. Thus, the sexual mutilation comes across as yet another instance of “a suitable vengeance.”Mick is just the first of four people who will die within one week, that same week that Lynley has taken Deborah, Simon and Lady Helen Clyde to Cornwall for the engagement festivities. Lynley is out of his jurisdiction from a police standpoint, although he and Simon investigate anyway. However, almost everyone involved is either related to Lynley by blood, employment or emotion. He is really not at the top of his game and he knows it. Simon’s ability to compartmentalize in the face of physical and emotional pain pulls the investigation together. But, basically, Lady Helen is the only principle character without a dog in this fight, so to speak. So she does what she does best, she mediates, she coordinates, and she uses both her high society skills and her acting ability to gain information for Lynley.Elizabeth George’s writing throughout this novel is rich, full and expressive. Her characters are, for the most part, high born and/or well educated and she writes a vocabulary to match. Her physical descriptions of people and locations are crisp and clear. Her characters are multi-dimensional and she does not paint them by description or dialogue with any particular society’s morality brush. They are who they are, they think and say what they will, and they live with the consequences.The entries in this series are usually classified as British police procedurals specializing in murder investigations. But this book, in particular, and the series is general, is not really about murder. It is about five intertwined characters: Lynley, Simon, Deborah, Lady Helen and Havers. Murder is only the catalyst that effects changes in these characters’ lives and affects the dynamics between them. This series is about people’s lives, not about people’s deaths.Even being about people’s lives, these entries, particularly this one, are not capable of being classified as romantic suspense either. Even if there are intimate relationships involved and there are mysteries and murders, the emotional, as well as the investigative, content is dark and sometimes quite stressful to absorb. There are no overt or erotic sexual scenarios. While much is alluded to or implied, nothing is gratuitous or sensationalized. And, if you need an HEA at the end, don’t look here. In this particular entry, Prince Charming does not get Cinderella, justice is not served, and every one of our characters reaches the last page grappling with some form of a personal living hell.
The game is afoot! Wait, wrong movie. In fact, everything is awry in this 4th book in the Lynley/Havers mystery series. Why is Lord Asherton, Thomas Lynley, Eighth Earl and Detective Inspector of CID, not at center stage as the lead protagonist in this story? He’s a bit offstage, instead of being the one who is in the game for most of the book. Instead, it appears to be mostly forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James who is following up on clues. Where is Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers? She doesn't seem to be on the job or be even known to the Lynleys.Tumultuous Asherton family surprises are at the forefront. A decade after Thomas’s father died, the entire Lynley family with various childhood friends, lovers and servants are all coming down to the Howenstow residence for a weekend to introduce Deborah Cotter to the family. Thomas Lynley is about to marry Deborah, photographer and daughter of Joseph Cotter, who is a lifelong servant to the St. James’. Deborah has returned to England from America after a three-year absence. Peter Lynley, Thomas’s brother, is a SoHo drug addict, and Sidney St. James, Simon’s sister, is involved with a scientist and drug addict, Justin Brooke. These two sets of young people have brought plenty of drugs to enliven their visit to dull Cornwall; however, the drugs run out and their party degrades into angry scenes, simmering resentments, wild sex and financial disputes. Thomas hates his mother, Lady Asherton, because she had an affair with Dr. Roderick Trenarrow while the Seventh Earl of Asherton, Thomas’s father, was dying of cancer. The Lady is still dating Dr. Trenarrow, inspiring Thomas to never-ending disgust with his mother. Deborah is pining for Simon, even while kissing Thomas, even though Simon is 11 years older and even though he is handicapped with a ruined leg - ruined by a car accident in a car driven by Thomas.Thomas can’t stop feeling guilty about driving drunk and crashing the car which almost destroyed Simon’s leg, but he is very happy now that Deborah has accepted his proposal. But before too long, he is disturbed by undercurrents between his best friend Simon and his fiancé Deborah. Simon is hiding his feelings with polite affection, but he finds being around Deborah difficult. Only one person is calm and centered and not guilty of having plotted vengeance in some degree - Lady Helen Clyde. She flows in and out of the chapters soothing savage hearts, but even she can't divert the impending disasters.Wow. I’m confused. Most of the conflicts above were mentioned in passing in the previous three books, but in ‘A Suitable Vengeance’, they either haven't happened yet or are happening now in this book’s present.Oh! It’s a prequel! Oh. Well!Family drama abounds! Zowie! Have you been noticing all of the clues in the previous 3 books that the backstory for Lynley and his friends is drenched in pathos, trauma and broken relationships? All is revealed in ‘A Suitable Vengeance’. However, I’m still very confused. This is a not a mystery, but a regular novel with chic-lit tendencies. Or is it?Despite a slow, slightly disjointed beginning of a hundred pages or so, the author Elizabeth George eventually brings into play the sad and ugly death of a Cornwall local which will send the Ashertons spinning out of their more comfortable miseries into the depressed universe the reader has come to know and love from the previous books. A local man, Michael ‘Mick’ Cambrey. is discovered dead on the floor of the Cornwall cottage he has been renting for himself and his wife Nancy and baby, obviously castrated. He is a reporter at a newspaper which is owned by Harry Cambrey, his father, but he has been keeping his latest investigations secret. Did he uncover a story too deadly to know? Or could the murder have been by an enraged husband, since it is widely known Mick has been in and out of many beds, despite his marriage? Or was it Nancy’s father, John Penellin, or her ne’er-do-well brother, Mark? Mick had been disbursing paychecks when he was murdered and many of the local drug addicts were broke, including Peter Lynley. Could Peter or another addict have murdered Mick for the cash?As if the Lynleys and the St. James’ didn’t have enough anxiety in their lives!Hooray!
What do You think about A Suitable Vengeance (2007)?
I've been looking for some time now for a new mystery series, and this may just be it. I purposefully read the fourth book in the series since it is a prequel to the first book. Hard to believe that the author Elizabeth George is an American--her depictions of well-to-do and working class Brits seems very realistic to me. I enjoyed the complex relationships between New Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, his fiance Deborah Cotter, forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James and his assistant Lady Helen Clyde, as much as I did the multi-layered murders they worked together to solve.
—Laura
The story is very complex, one that explains the background of several characters of this Inspector Lynley mystery series .After reading the 3 first books I had trouble with the sequences of events regarding the characters things seem to be out of synch. I was trying to remember what happened to them previously and I found it conflicted with the way they are presented now. The plot in my view is a bit flat, it starts out interesting enough but it drags on and on. The characters are self -absorbed, full of themselves compared to the previous books making it hard to relate to them. I agree with others who suggest it would have made a wonderful short story.
—Toni Osborne
Although Suitable Vengeance is the fourth Inspector Thomas Lynley novel published, it concerns events that occurred before A Great Deliverance, the first of the series published. In reviewing that book, I noted that there was more than enough material in the various characters' back stories to support a prequel, and here it is. Suitable Vengeance focuses on the complex relationships among Lynley, Eighth Earl of Ashemore, his long time friend, the crippled forensic scientist Simon St. James, and Deborah Cotter, the 20 year old daughter of St. James' long time butler who was raised "downstairs" in the St. James household. Lady Helen Clyde, St. James' present associate and former mistress, plays a lesser role, and Sgt. Barbara Havers, who will later become Lynley's working class partner in Great Deliverance, has only a walk on part. Readers who especially relish Havers and the class conflicts between her and Thomas will be disappointed. This novel takes place at Ashemore, Lynley's vast estate that makes Downton Abbey look like a share cropper's hovel. It introduces Lynley's cocaine addicted younger brother, Peter, and St. James' flighty younger sister, Sidney, and their current lovers, as well as Lynley's widowed mother the Dowager Countess from whom he is estranged. Plus a full array of village characters. Yes, once again George has given us enough characters to populate a soap opera. Keeping track of them is made more difficult by having a female character with a male name (Sidney), a male character with a female name (Brooke), and others with look-alike names (Mick and Mark). The occasion is a weekend engagement/house party announcing the betrothal of Thomas and Deborah, an event that will come as a surprise to those of us who recall Deborah marrying Simon at the beginning of A Great Deliverance. With all these emotions and relationships being explored, it isn't until Page 100 that we actually discover the castrated body of the first victim, the village newspaper editor. In the ensuing pages the local mystery is skillfully interwoven and integrated with the overall romantic drama and plot lines concerning drug dealing and addiction, apparent prostitution, possible blackmail, and medical malpractice as additional murders take place. There are many people seeking suitable vengeances. While I feared that my prior reading of the earlier novels would detract from this, the foreknowledge they provide actually enhanced this story. I would still choose to read them in the order published rather than beginning with No. 4.
—Megargee
