Customer Reviews

Payment in Blood (Thorndike Famous Authors)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The second installment in Elizabeth George's successful Lynley-Havers mystery series is a solid successor to the first book, A Great Deliverance. In this story, the melding of the cozy, police procedural, and hard-boiled genres that was balanced so well in the first book leans a little more to the cozy side of things, with a trip to Scotland to investigate a murder on an ancient Scottish estate (turned up-scale bed and breakfast), which evolves into a classic locked-room mystery with a cast of illustrious and spoiled suspects. The emphasis is a bit more on Lynley than Havers in this story, which is expected since he promotes more of the cozy feel, while Havers promotes more of the hard-boiled feel. However, Havers fans should not despair -- her dark side is still there, althouth a bit tempered. All in all, this mystery advances the ongoing tale of these two seemingly ill-matched yet complementary partners, by exploring Lynley's "dark side", fleshing him out a bit more than in the first book.

Elizabeth George takes the cool Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley and turns his world upside down. For unknown and possibly public relations reasons, Scotland Yard sends Lynley outside of his jurisdiction to Scotland to take over an investigation after a fetching playwright is found murdered in her bed.

But, the guest in the adjoining room is Lynley's much beloved Lady Helen Clyde. To Lynley's chagrin, it turns out that Lady Helen has been sharing her boudoir. Naturally, she must be interrogated. How will Lynley bear up?

Lynley is clearly distraught by dealing with the situation and is soon making big mistakes. How will that affect the investigation? Well, it's not good . . . but fortunately Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers is on duty with Lynley.

Although this is a mystery, the book succeeds more as an investigation into the English class system and its weaknesses. With Barbara Havers standing in for every person in her role as skeptical seeker after truth, we see the rotten underpinnings of having a hereditary elite in place. How far has the rot spread? Well, you'll just have to read the book to find out.

The mystery itself takes some tangled turns that will provide much entertainment.

I graded the book down a bit. Some scenes didn't resonate with my impressions of this character from the last book. I thought that Ms. George had Lynley's head spinning a bit more than seems likely from what we learned about him in A Great Deliverance.

The book is a very important one in the series though. Frequent references in future books are made to the events in this one. You will enrich your enjoyment of future books if you read Payment in Blood.

Even though George paints a somewhat old-fashioned portrait of English life, she is still able to write very very good mysteries.

Her detecive thrillers are clever, intuitive, have nice twists, good, well evoked settings, and are very well written, if somewhat OVER written.

the mystery here is first class as ever. she writes with the style of agatha christie, and comes up with solutions that the dead queen would be proud of. It is only a shame that Lynley is not quite as interesting as Poirot. However, the relationships the main characters 5 characters really are VERY interesting. they add weight, credibility, and realism to the story. they add a more personal and intimate side, and prove an ongoing drama to mix with that of the different crimes which come up in each book.

She is very good at drawing her character, and very good at coming up with agatha christie style plots. her psychology is accurate, and her writing very descriptive.

Definitely worth a read. This second book was very very good. So far, i dont think she written a bad one, and i've read nearly all of them. A good build up A Great Deliverance, and got the series off to a really smashing start.

I enjoy the Lynley/Havers series very much and found this book very hard to put down. The central mystery involves the death of a Playwright on a Scottish estate and the cast of suspects that were involved. The story moves from the estate to various other locations which keeps the reader interested.

There were some problems that I had with the story. There were too many characters and sub-plots involved that took away from the main mystery- including the romantic turmoil of Lynley and some past crimes. There was also a conspiracy plot thrown which only took away from the main mystery.

I did like the character development and I did feel for Lynley and Havers at various times during the novel. This is still a good mystery to add to your collection and I will continue to follow this series.

And the first novel in this series was pretty dang good. The only thing that gave me fits was that there were so many characters that until one was introduced at length, I couldn't get a good fix on his or her place in the story. But I was pleased with the plotting as well as the development of the main characters.

The mystery in this book was a bit more complex than that in George's first book in this series: the solution was not as apparent. Unfortunately, there were so many secondary characters that it was hard to keep them straight. It was obvious that these characters were there to act as "red herrings".

I also thought that the coincidence of Lady Helen being on the scene of a murder, and intimately involved, was a bit of a stretch, but was able to accept it with just a grain of salt.

George did a fairly good job of giving us more insight into the main characters (Lynley, Havers, Helen, and Deborah) and fleshed out their backgrounds quite well.

I thought that the last third of the book was far too dragged out...I found myself skimming a lot.

I bought all of Elizabeth George's book with her team of detective. I love them all. Her talent for mystery writing and psychology of characters is unique. She is one of my favorite authors of all time.

I am a long-time mystery fan and have been an Elizabeth George fan since I first heard ''In The Presence Of The Enemy''on audio tape, so when I received Payment In Blood, I knew I would not be disappointed! Indeed, Payment In Blood is bloody well done, because it is the delicious twists and turns in search of the answer to the question of who the murderer is and what the motive was, as well as Derek Jacobi's beautiful interpretation of the soft, musical brogue of the Scottish Highlands which makes this mystery particularly enjoyable!

Payment in Blood is my 2nd Elizabeth George book but certainly not my last. Besides being a good mystery story, it is also the continuation of Detective Lynley & Havers personal life. While her first novel, A Great Deliverance, focused on the prickly but determined Barbara Havers, this second novel is all about the charming but no less complex partner, Thomas Lynley.

This murder mystery is set in a cold, gray, chilly castle in Scotland where a group of actors and their director are staying so they can work on a play written by the talented writer Joy Sinclair. Unfortunately, Ms. Sinclair is murdered on the very first night of their arrival to the remote castle. A dagger right through her neck, ugh. Scotland Yard is called and all the suspects are locked in a room while Lynley & Havers along with forensic scientist, Simon St. Allcourt gather clues.

What made this story so interesting was the dilema that Detective Lynley faces when it appears that his good friend (aka love interest) Helen Clyde is in the room with the only access to the victim. Is she the killer? Is it the man that she is sleeping with who happens to be the murder victim's cousin. Lynley is conflicted by the desire to protect Helen but also by a burning jealousy to blame her boyfriend. In the pursuit of justice, the lines are a little blurred when Lynley allows this jealousy to get the best of him when he goes after the boyfriend with a vengeance. Is he on the right trail....read Payment in Blood to find out. I can't wait to read her next novel.

Havers and Lynley are the best Detective Team out there as far as I'm concerned. They are so opposite, but they work. It's nice to see that Havers takes charge a bit in this book. This is a fine example of an English "cozy", and I liked the tight plot and the story was good too. Ms. George usually has two or three main storylines going at once, and this book is no exception with two, and she has a talent for fully developing both as she gets through her story. She's an excellent writer, and I really enjoy this series. I can't wait to read another to see how the relationship between Havers and Lynley develops. I hope to see more of the talented Miss Havers in the next books.