Oh my. I'm still catching my breath. I think I stopped breathing about 7 times in the days it took me to finish 'Well-schooled in Murder'. That's about how often I thought the killer was going to be unmasked, only to discover, along with Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers of New Scotland Yard CID, that we all were wrong again. Oh, the crimes and criminals and secrets were being exposed as fast and furious as a hail storm - but not the murderer of a 13-year-old student, Matthew Whately, attending Bredgar Chambers, a financially tottering and doddering independent English school teaching 'B' list aristocrat children, mostly boys from 13 to 18. The school had been established several centuries ago. The customs and mores being instilled and enforced onto the students grew out of the Middle Ages, particularly those of maintaining upper-class solidarity against the unwashed masses. Poor Matt, in every sense of the word, was a scholarship student, his father being a stonemason and his mother a barmaid, which the school reluctantly has begun to accept. However, the student body is still quite white and aristocrat in accent and studies. Matt and a few of the other lower-class boys definitely were not having an easy time of it. Matt also did not accept the unwritten codes, foremost being loyal to your mates first, then the school. He believed in living in a moral and just universe for all, and helping the innocent and bullied. Can't you already guess in a school for adolescent boys being dragged into the 20th century (the novel was printed in 1990) that little decent intelligent artistic Matt is not going to see his graduation? However, this is an entitled community of blackguards and repressed sexuality, long used to presenting a surface conformity and centuries-old, publicly enforced strict rules and rituals, while indulging in wild drunken or obscenely punitive parties behind closed doors and in dark hallways, with nothing ever ever to be exposed outside of the group.Lynley finds himself more than understanding the school rituals and secret codes, having gone to school at Eton. He gets drawn into the atmosphere easily, and if it wasn't for Havers reminding him there is a murderer and possible pedophile, either student or teacher, loose and dangerous, it would be difficult for Lynley to remember aristocratic traditions do not necessarily create good people.When Lynley and Havers can keep their attention focused on the case, they slowly crack through the walls teachers and students have built around crimes, large and small, too numerous to mention. The school is a hothouse of terrible secrets and failures of duty, mostly from repressed emotional distresses and disturbing relationships. But unfortunately for both detectives, their relatives and friends are imploding and as a result, a distraction. Lynley's relationship with Helen is a non-starter, which has Lynley broken-hearted and feeling jilted, while Helen has run away to Europe on an extended vacation. She was going to marry another gentleman in the previous book in the series, and had been traumatized instead by horrible events. So Lynley is mourning the loss of her presence. Haver's demented mother is losing ground understanding her surroundings, while her father is finding his health deteriorating very fast. Havers finds the struggle hiding her parents from her fellow cops while the two need her more and more because of their disabilities overwhelming. She already has imposed on herself a mountain of emotional stress from trying to earn promotions in a profession where women rarely are more than secretaries and her employer the Yard being riddled with class prejudice against her because of her accent alone, much less her sex. If all of that wasn't enough in ratcheting up excitement in this thrilling mystery, the author catches us up with the seemingly doomed relationship of Lynley's best friend, handicapped forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James and Lynley's former lover, Deborah, now married to St. James. Deborah has had another miscarriage, her fourth, since their marriage. She thinks it's because of an abortion she had 7 years ago (OMG, it was Lynley's! He doesn't know!). So Deborah is incredibly mopey and depressed. Simon has noticed. But he thinks Deborah has fallen out of love with him and that she wants to hook up with Lynley again. Simon is WAY older than her, and he can't get it up - his leg, I mean (got you, didn't I?). Simon's leg is messed up because Lynley drove drunk and smashed up his car and Simon's leg.OMG!!!!!!!!There be torture of tots, murders of minors, fearsome funerals and bad teachers. Excessive emoting, grueling gruesomeness and dramatic despair fill these pages, but despite the doom and drama, I could not put the book down! Not only was this a thrill ride and exciting, but it is intricate and tricky, with suspects and clues revolving as confusedly about as an automated stage set of scenery.This is a 'fun' series to read, people! Don't judge me.......Where I grew up, the State of Washington, the first European settlement was established in 1833 in mud, rain, forests, rivers, lakes, mountains and wildlife. Washington state voted to become part of the United States in 1889. Its first non-Indian settlers were prostitutes, mail-order wives, farmers, fishermen, fur trappers, loggers, miners, missionaries and hermits. The small town of Seattle was established in 1853. (I was born there about a hundred years later!) Seattle now is a medium-sized city. Territorial University, now the University of Washington, was opened in 1861. (I was in the third grade 100 years later!) The single available class originally was for elementary students and the teachers were missionaries. The first real school building only for young Seattle kids opened in 1870 (I was a junior in high school 100 years later!) It had two classrooms, not counting the attic, which opened later. I started kindergarten in 1958, 88 years after the very first school in Seattle had opened. EIGHTY-EIGHT years! Compare that with the history of the establishment of schools in England, and their traditional pomp, glory and ceremonies stretching back centuries! Centuries!!! To say that when books describe the ancient schools, and everything else, of Europe boggles my mind is an understatement. (The utterly foreign sense of millennia of traditions in Europe in general fascinates me.) 'Well-schooled Murder' isn't the first book about all of the strong 'secret club' emotional mysticism that seems to surround certain hoary institutions, but it definitely gives a good feel of it. In my opinion, it seems to me the author is saying that at least some of the schools need modernization, and a good cleaning, literally. As a female, I couldn't agree more on both ideas.I remember as a child, Seattle seemed to consist of a lot of taverns and square tall cement and dirt-encrusted brick 2- and 6-story buildings with rotting wooden and brick ones mixed in, and grassy empty lots, brick and wood churches and a new spotless 6-lane freeway that had maybe ten cars using it on Sundays, with double that on weekdays. In my teen years, Seattle got its first skyscrapers of shiny glass and mirrored materials (some of which caused many many car wrecks on the now bumper-to-bumper traffic on the previous 6-car lane converted into narrow 8-lane freeway). In my lifetime, change has been swift and constant. Nothing of my old neighborhood exists, since all of the buildings and even the streets have been redone. So the stories about the European Old World that authors write about in books have a fascination for me which lingers long after I put the book down. I realize that Europe mostly been rebuilt as well (hello, two major world wars, plus countless other little and medium wars) - still, when it has preserved old buildings and city centers, America can't compete. Our first recorded settlement was in 1565, depending on context. To say these settlements consisted of mostly mud and three buildings is more accurate. A civilized grandeur has never really been present in my country, IMHO. However, we certainly have accomplished other forms of grandiosity! ; )http://geography.about.com/od/uniteds...http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Au...http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A076391...
Elizabeth George may write this book, but the first five sentences of J. D. Robb’s “Reunion in Death” describe the alpha and the omega of this work more succinctly than anything I can manufacture: “Murder was work. Death was a serious chore for the killer, the victim, for the survivors. And for those who stood for the dead. Some went about the job devotedly, others carelessly. And for some, murder was a labor of love.”And as you read this book, it all comes down to how one defines murder and how one defines love.As this third novel in the Inspector Lynley series opens, two months have passed since the disastrous events at the conclusion of the previous novel. Thomas Lynley is working every case available to him at Scotland Yard, trying to survive Lady Helen’s self-imposed exile in Greece. As the author writes on page 8: “For the past two months Lynley had been burning the candle not only at both ends but right through the middle.”On one Sunday evening, Barbara Havers has just about convinced Lynley to leave the Yard when they are visited by John Corntel, one of Lynley’s old classmates from Eton. Corntel is there to ask for Lynley’s help in the case of a child just discovered missing from the Bredgar Chambers school where Corntel is a faculty member and housemaster. Even though missing persons’ cases are out of his jurisdiction and the Yard’s help has not been officially requested, Lynley agrees to check it out, just as a favor to “the old school tie.”Unknown to Lynley, Havers and Corntel, the missing child has just been found – naked, tortured and very dead. And, it seems, Lynley’s best friend’s wife, Deborah St. James, has found the body while on a photographic shoot in a famous church’s graveyard. And thus begins a most convoluted and emotionally draining murder mystery, because Matthew Whateley is not the first person to die at this school nor is he the last. Matthew Whateley is simply the only person who is murdered.There are actually five sub-plots weaving throughout and sharing the billing with the murder investigation. First, there is Lynley’s tenuous relationship with Lady Helen. Secondly are Havers’ problems with her ailing father and mentally ill mother. Third is Deborah St. James’ estrangement from Simon following her fourth miscarriage. Fourth is the devastation and disintegration of the lives of Matthew Whateley’s parents. And lastly is Lynley’s struggle with his personal ethics versus his professional responsibilities.Before the identity of the murderer is revealed, Elizabeth George takes us on a pointed exploration into both the written and unwritten codes of behavior that exist in many boarding schools. She tracks the effects of these codes on not only the current students and staff but on the adults who have graduated from these types of schools, particularly Lynley and Corntel. We get a hard look into bullying in a situation where a parent is not readily available, and into racial bias and class bias by both students and staff. We get just as hard a look into pedophilia, pregnancy, abortion and unrequited love.But regardless of which plot line the author is exploring, the murder itself or the subplots, we are taken down the pathways of guilt, earned or unearned, as well as remorse, genuine or totally lacking. These elements of guilt, remorse and honor take Lynley and the reader through multiple dead ends, blind alleys and twists. Before the final pages, these elements are part and parcel of the destruction of at least a dozen people, not counting the murderer and the murdered. But these same elements become the beginning threads of redemption for at least three others.This book covers only four days in the lives of many people. It begins with death and it ends with death. There are no smiles in this book; there is no laughter. There is no happy ending even though the murderer is identified. But there is hope. In the last pages, there is hope.
What do You think about Well-Schooled In Murder (2007)?
This is one of the somewhat earlier books in the Inspector Tommy Lynleyseries, and it's excellent on a variety of levels. Not only will the mainplot keep you reading and wondering, but the subplots are interesting,too. In fact, I often complain a little about the length of theseElizabeth George books, but not so this one.Lynley has been called to a boarding school rich in tradition. A13-year-old boy has been murdered, and his tortured body has beenunceremoniously dumped in a churchyard. It's up to Lynley to figure outwhat happened, and he does; but there is a multiplicity of secrets kept bythe students and staff. Lynley has to peel back the dark and murkysecrets of the school-a place far more interested in protecting itsreputation and image than in helping Lynley and his partner get at thetruth.There's a heart-rending subplot here, too, that involves Lynley'slong-time forensics specialist friend Simon ST. James and his photographerwife, Deborah. She has miscarried, and her past is in play as she erectsbarriers that drive the couple dangerously apart. There is a two-sentencedescription of an abortion in this book. That shouldn't be a deal breakereven for those of you who strongly oppose abortion for any reason. Iwouldn't call it graphic so much as vivid, and it's really quite brief butmemorable.There's a new twist very nearly on every page, and I found the book agreat way to escape the stresses of life in early February.
—Nolan
As a mystery, this book was fine. A little slow to start, but by the end, I was definitely caught up in the mystery. Right up until the end, George keeps you guessing as to who the murder suspect was - and why they did it. I haven't read any of the Lynley novels before - not sure what back story I missed by starting with book 3 (books 1 and 2 weren't available at the library), but it didn't seem to really affect the meat of the story.That said, I had a lot of problems with the overarching tones of the novel itself. (view spoiler)[ I realize that this book was written in 1990 and things have changed quite a bit since then, but it honestly struck me how judgemental George was about premarital sex and abortion. Basically, every character in the book who has premarital sex is punished in some way - for example:Deborah - has sex when she was 18, gets an abortion, now can't stay pregnantChas and Cecilia - have sex and wind up with a deformed baby. Bonus: Chas totally kills himself.Edward Hsu - has sex, kills himself.Edward Hsu's lover - has sex (an affair), has a baby, baby gets killed eventually by legitimate sonCorntel - doesn't have sex, gets turned on by child porn, has sex, gets found out.Additionally, OMG with the child porn. I understand being friends, yadda yadda, but IF YOU FIND CHILD PORN AND IT BELONGS TO AN OLD FRIEND YOU DO NOT HUSH IT UP, ESPECIALLY IF SAID FRIEND WORKS WITH CHILDREN! I don't care if you went to Eton together. (hide spoiler)]
—Katie
I was actually really impressed with this book. The murder mystery itself wasn't necessarily very novel or unique (and near the end it gave in to one of the old hack tricks -- where each character in turn is accused of being the murderer, only to spill a clue which leads to the accusation of the next character), and it was also a little unpleasant at times (not only did it deal with a rather graphic and unpleasant crime, but all of the characters had pretty miserable incidents in their lives -- senile parents to care for, unrequited love, an abortion leading to infertility, suicide, sexual torture, pedophilia, divorce, an unloving father, the death of a father...I'm not sure anyone in the book was actually happy, until they threw two or three of the characters a bone in the final chapter). Still, the level of detail and description was excellent. And the characterization! The characterization was incredible -- probably the best I've ever read in a mystery novel.
—Mike
