Customer Reviews

With No One as Witness

5 star:		(102)
4 star:		(64)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(47)

 

 

When the naked body of a dead young boy is found mutilated and artfully arranged on top of a tomb, it opens up a whole can of worms for the Metropolitan Police Force of London, for it turns out that this is just the latest in a string of similar murders. The thing is that the previous victims had been either black or of mixed race and had been written off as gang related killings. This latest victim, however, is white and is inviting a whole lot of interest. Hoping to contain the accusations of racism and callousness, AC Hillier appoints acting Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley to the case, assigning him newly promoted Detective Winston Nkata (window dressing in Hiller's mind for the public as Nkata is off Jamaican background) and allowing Lynley to keep fiery Detective Constable Barbara Havers on the team. Everyone quickly realises that they have a serial killer on their hands; and as they race to discover how many prior victims there were and identify them, and to try to establish a pattern of sorts that would give them a clue as to the killer's modus operandi, Lynley also has to contend with Hiller's need to direct the investigation and his desire that Lynley and his team cooperate with the newspapers. As the killings continue to mount, and as the police officers race to get a result, things take an unexpected and explosive turn, one that perhaps neither Lynley nor Havers will ever recover from..

With "With No One as Witness" Elizabeth George is once again in top form. I was terribly disappointed with "A Place of Hiding," and began to wonder if the Lynely-Havers mysteries would ever go back to becoming the compelling, dark reads that they once were. But this new Lynely-Havers installment reminded me of the old days, where I would devour each new installment in one go, relishing how both Lynely and Havers, using different points of reference would complement each other in order to solve the mystery at hand. Well crafted, and obviously meticulously researched (for example how the author effortlessly fleshes out the many grueling aspects of how a police investigation is conducted was truly awe-inspiring), this was definitely a labour of love. There was only one small detraction to "With No One as Witness" and that it was that the first half the novel was rather slow and heavy going. Fortunately Elizabeth George intersperses the slow moving initial police investigation with the chapters in which we are privy to the serial killers thoughts and movements. Chillingly and suspensefully describing how he stalks his young victims, and how he captures them (will the killer grab his victim without any problems, or will the victim escape at the last possible moment?), Ms George ably and competently conveys that "edge-of-your-seat" feeling. Also well done was the manner in which she conveys just how stressed out acting Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley is becoming as he faces pressure from his superior (AC Hiller) to get a result quickly and to do things his way. As I noted before the pace does pick up about halfway through, and that coupled with the small plot twist should keep any mystery reader happily engrossed to the very end. And while some readers may be dismayed at the shocking turn the book takes, this only added to the pathos and promise of even darker installments to follow. All in all, "With No One as Witness" was an absorbing and compelling read that should not be missed.

Reading this novel reminds me of how I felt watching Michael Jordan play baseball. I respected the emotions that were driving him, and he did an OK job at it, but I just wanted him to get it out of his system already and go back to basketball, which he played like no one else on earth. Like an angel.

In With No One as Witness, Elizabeth George inflicts on us her restlessness with the world she so brilliantly created over the past 17 years. Instead of her gorgeously-plotted and intimate tales of normal people driven to murder, she strikes out into the territory of serial killers. It's a mistake.

In the past, she's developed villains who linger in our memory for the richness of their characters and the awful logic that drives them to commit murder. But for the grace of God, any of us might be Robin Payne (In the Presence of the Enemy) or Sarah Gordon (For the Sake of Elena).

In this book, she provides a serial killer, whose character verges on a parody of serial killers; a host of secondary characters who's motives are perplexing; and an inattention to versimilitude that is highly annoying and most unlike George. Oh, and she also stuffs the book with weighty themes including racism, child pornography, and the evils of tabliod journalism.

But my real beef with this novel isn't that she branches off into an area that she handles less well: any author of a long-running series is bound to run out of ideas sometimes. And there's a long and honorable tradition of authors of one genre flexing their creative muscles in another area â€" think of beloved crime writer P.D. James and her foray into science fiction (The Children of Men). But P.D. James was smart: when she wanted to branch out, she let her main series take a rest and created a whole different cast of characters for her attempt at science fiction.

My real beef is that, unlike James, George is trying her hand at serial killing within the context of her long-running series, and the real victim seems to be the series itself. In the last chapters she kills off an essential character (but not by the serial killer) in a way that is so implausible that I'm left feeling that she wrote this book on a Bad Plot Day.

If you want to read about serial killers, find an author who's better at portraying this kind of evil. If you want to keep reading about the continuing growth of Tommy, Helen, Simon, Deborah, and Barbara, cross your fingers that this was just an unfortunate experiment for this formerly fine author.

Come back, Elizabeth. We love you.

I have read all of Elizabeth George's mysteries and one book of her short stories. When I first discovered her, I was delighted to find that she is still relatively young and likely has many long years of writing ahead. It was like learning that my favorite foods would be on the table for the rest of my life.

What I liked especially about the first book of hers was that it was complex and messy. There were details of the lives of everyone involved that were not necessarily related in any way to the detection of a murderer. And even the murder investigation itself did not end neatly, with everything wrapped up. We know from real life that this is more often how it is than not. In each subsequent book the complexities build and expand, sometimes with exquisite slowness.

The mysteries develop her main characters, Scotland Yard detectives Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, as well as their coworkers, friends, and the main suspects. Through the span of George's books, Lynley and Havers have grown and changed. The changes in each book are significant, and in this one perhaps most of all.

George lives in two worlds: Huntington Beach, California and London, England. She is an American Anglophile. Her mysteries are set in London, and it appears that she spends every waking minute there soaking it up. Every page she writes is saturated with references purely English, including spelling, customs, food, buildings and places, and especially English slang. To my mind, she tries too hard. On the other hand, P.D. James, an English mystery writer whose characters also frequent London, doesn't feel called upon to demonstrate her familiarity with England on page after page, which is clearly the privilege of having been born to it. If I hadn't known that George is not English I think I would still have suspected it. One advantage of George's insistence on accuracy in her portrayal of London is that she presents the city to us on a platter, and it isn't hard to enjoy every piece on it.

And finally I come down to it, to this particular book. Those who are George fans don't need anyone telling them to buy this book. Those who have not read any others might. Thus I say, yes, buy it. It's a lot of book at the price, and it will absorb you as few others can.

In this hefty novel we find Thomas Lynley and his new wife, Helen, expecting a baby. And we find the recently-demoted socially-inept Barbara Havers (see previous books for the cause) coping with her new status and with her fondness for her next-door neighbors. Acting Superintendent Lynley (because his chief, Superintendent Webberly, is recovering from a murder attempt - again see previous novels in the series) is forced to work directly under the politically motivated Assistant Commissioner Hillier while leading a team of thirty-plus investigators in solving a series of murders of young adolescent boys. The strains of having Hillier trample on his authority, forcing Lynley to take on an "embedded journalist", among other insults, wear deeply upon Lynley, eating away bit by bit at his original motivation for joining Scotland Yard.

What happens to Lynley during the course of this book alters him forever. What happens to Havers may seem like less but ultimately may mean even more to her future. I wait impatiently for the next...

Books in the 'Inspector Lyley' series have been a source of reading pleasure since I happened on one by accident, enjoyed it so much that I have searched out and bought a copy of each of the books in the series, and have read each of them several times over. For me, the characters in the series lend as much as do the plots of each of them. I liked that in some of them, Barbara was featured and in others, Simon and Deborah; we also became more acquainted with the facets of Helen. The plots were excellent and well-crafted.

Therefore, I was so looking forward to WNOAW that I pre-ordered a copy of the publishers. I wish that I had waited. The day my copy arrived, March 15 as scheduled, was the day that I read a review; of course, it would be one with 'spoilers'. It is a good mystery, which certainly took a lot of time, thought and effort.

However, the book as a whole is not cohesive. There are so many things going on in so many directions with so many plots, sub-plots, 'red herrings' that it was slow going to read. And, then the 'tragedy' -- it almost seemed that the author had so many words that had to be used and she came up with this as a solution. It has only a slight connection to some issues.

However, I think there surely had to be another, better solution if she wanted the series to go in another direction!!!

I would have rated the book as a 5, but must give it a 3, for the, to me, outrageous way of the tragedy.

I was beyond thrilled when Elizabeth George's newest hit the racks. I consumed the others in the series. Her latest is fast-paced and very interesting. But after a surprising and unwelcome plot-twist 3/4 of the way through, I really had a hard time finishing it. Overall, it was depressing. Who wants to see your heroes bleeding thru the last page?

I really did LOVE this series- bought them in hardcover, which I never do for other books. I thought the last one was weak, but I was even more extremely disappointed with this one. Part of what made George fabulous was the insight into all her characters- the detectives, the victims, the killers. She was great at creating the little details, the shades of gray, of helping us understand how these people got to where they were. Not anymore. Now we have random killings, no understanding of the killer, no insight into our beloved friends and their situations. Is she inflicting agony on the characters (and us) because she's running out of plots? Has she forgotten how to build a good plot? I'm not sure why this series has changed, but I do know it's not worth it anymore.

I have read every one of Elizabeth George's Lynley series, so it was with anticipation that I sat down to read her latest. Before I had read many pages, I found myself getting bored. By the time I was halfway through the book, I gave up on it and read the last 40-50 pages, which are harrowing but, to me, a disappointment. I felt that killing off a major character -- or two characters, as the case was -- is a quick and dirty way of keeping the series going. Come on -- how often does something like that happen in real life? The thing I have liked about George's previous novels is that they had a ring of truth -- that this is the way life really is. Now that she's joined the serial killer bandwagon like almost every other mystery writer, I think she has lost her unique voice. The jury's still out on whether I will read her next book.

While I enjoy reading Ms. George's books, at times I've lost patience with the seemingly endless existential angst of the main characters. Constant ruminations on the emotional aspect of St. James' disability, Helen and Lynley's boringly circuitous path to marriage, the reader's forced participation in the minutiae of Deborah's constant ruminations on her infertility.............only Barbara Haver's coping with life and loneliness in her inimitable but realistic way saves us from disliking the other characters who cope so elegantly with their problems. Has anyone else noticed that Havers is the only one who is authentically unattractive?

With that said, this armchair quarterback always enjoys the deft writing of Elizabeth George. Her books are great sit-down- and-procrastinate-everything-else reads. Even though she sometimes drags, I'm willing to read those passages in order to enjoy the rest of the book.

I did enjoy this book. I think it was much better than last year's. I don't like the serial killer idea, as someone else has pointed out. I tend to think that writers get lazy when they exploit things like crazy religious nuts or serial killers. I've always thought that one of the main characters was a two-dimensional character and the tragedy in the book didn't affect me as much as Haver's tears at the end. Therefore, I hope we don't have two or three more books in which a different main character grapples endlessly with another round of angst/anquish. I hope Ms. George moves on in an efficient but interesting way.

"With No One as Witness" just might be the very best book in the Lynley/Havers series. I have been an avid reader since "A Great Deliverance" and I can honestly say Ms. George got me on this one......I hate reviews that sums up the plot of the book, so I will skip that. What I will say is the plot twist in this book turns the entire series on its ear, and literally left me with my jaw open.

BRAVO Ms. George.....What you did was brave, and necessary to shift the series in a different direction. Lynley/Havers fans, trust me on this...You will not be disappointed!

The epitaph for this book ("Look into the abyss and it will look into you") sets the tone for this sprawling, nihilistic and deeply disappointing novel.

Readers loyal to George for her precisely plotted tales of ordinary people caught in situations where murder is the only option will be disappointed by her foray into the world of serial killing. The killer - comically named Fu - doesn't ring true as a psychopath. And while George nicely captures the terrible stress that Lynley and crew are under while trying to catch him, her portrayal of Lynley's nasty boss Hillier is unconvincing. And this, from the writer who used to be one of the very best portrayers of psychological depth in her characters. In books such as Missing Joseph, for example, we come to really understand why Juliet Spence becomes a murderer. That's what gave the richness and staying power to George's earlier works. In With No One as Witness, we just don't get why people are acting the way they do. And we don't even care.

I'm a reader who adored George for the ongoing story of her quintet of core characters - Tommy, Helen, Barabara, Simon, and Deborah. In Witness, George turns on them with a destructive frenzy that will surely stand as one of the most ill-considered plot evolutions of modern fiction. She kills off a character essential to the balance of her series in the most pointless, tear-jerking, and bleak manner imaginable. At the end of the book I could only throw my hands into the air and wonder what on earth George was thinking of.

I only hope that in the whole body of George's work, Witness turns out to be an unfortunate detour. I hope that she's now exorcised whatever demons drove her to write this utterly bleak novel, and that she will find her center again in the Lynley novels-with all her essential characters alive and growing.

The only thing that makes me happy about this book is that it was passed on to me by a disgusted seat mate on a long-distance flight. I'm glad I didn't have to buy it and risk her publisher misinterpreting my purchase as a sign of approval.