“A GREAT DELIVERANCE” BY ELIZABETH GEORGE
“To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale’s lush green valleys. Three hundred years ago, as legend goes, the frightened Yorkshire villagers smothered a crying babe in Keldale Abbey, where they’d hidden to escape the ravages of Cromwell’s raiders.”—reads the back cover of the book.
Elizabeth George’s “A Great Deliverance” is first one in a series of mystery novels introducing Scotland Yard Inspector, Thomas Lynley (the eighth Earl of Asherton), his formidable partner, Detective Barbara Havers, as well as a forensic scientist and Lynley’ long-time friend, Simon St. James. In this story they are trying to solve a savage murder that has shocked the whole normally peaceful village.
A body of a young girl has been found, clothed in her best Sunday dress, with an axe in her lab, right next to her father’s decapitated corpse. As Lynley and Havers take their case deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of dark village secrets and crimes, they discover earth-shattering revelations that will resonate through the quiet community of Keldale as well as their own lives.
“A Great Deliverance” is a fascinating novel that is partly psychological and partly detective story. George uses her talent well contriving a dramatic and mesmerizing web of intrigue and suspense that keeps readers turning page after agonizing page with a pounding heart until the very end. Moreover, the cinematic eye for detail, intricate tangle of plots and subplots as well as an array of compelling and well-developed characters make it a detective novel of the best caliber, comparable to P.D. James and Agatha Christi.
So if you’re in the mood for a bit of mystery that will force your brain into activity trying to detangle the events and figure out the outcome of the crime, pick up a copy of this (or any other books by George, for that matter) and you will not be disappointed.