What Came Before He Shot Her [Import] [Hardcover]

Elizabeth George (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340951346
• ISBN-13: 978-0340951347
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (294 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Elizabeth George is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels of psychological suspense, one book of nonfiction, and two short-story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, the Grand Prix de LittÉrature PoliciÈre, and the MIMI, Germany's prestigious prize for suspense fiction. She lives in Washington State.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A worthy writing experiment that strays from traditional crime-solving formulas, October 27, 2006

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Came Before He Shot Her (Hardcover)

"A wanton act of destruction" --- no, not a murder as such, but the way one of Elizabeth George's outraged readers described the unhappy ending of WITH NO ONE AS WITNESS, her second-to-last book: Helen, the adored pregnant wife of George's policeman hero, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, is gunned down on the doorstep of her London house. Mystery lovers are often habituated to tidy, let-justice-be-done denouements; sacrificing Lynley's nearest and dearest evidently violated some unspoken taboo.

When Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes (he was weary of turning out stories about the eccentric detective), his admirers were so upset that he had to bring Holmes back from the dead. George, in contrast, doesn't seem inclined to appease her fans: Instead, she takes an even bigger chance in her new book, WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER, telling the story behind Mrs. Lynley's murder.

The apparent culprit is 12-year-old Joel Campbell, a mixed-race boy from North Kensington --- a neighborhood where the police are not heroes but enemies; where gangs rule, drugs and sexual violence are endemic, and there is a constant struggle to survive. Joel and his two siblings --- Vanessa, his older, troubled sister, and Toby, a boy who seems to live in his own private world --- are all but orphaned (their father is dead, their mother in a psychiatric hospital; they've been abandoned by their grandmother and fobbed off on an aunt). Caught between painful memories of a one-time happy childhood and the perils of their current existence, they lurch helplessly down the road to disaster. Lynley, by the way, does not even appear in the book, and his police sidekicks, Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata, have only a walk-on --- another probable source of distress for George's devotees.

WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER is a gamble in two senses. George not only diverges from the traditional crime-solving formula, she is also a white, well-heeled American presuming to get inside the lives and heads of black, struggling Londoners. No matter how well intentioned, this effort will certainly be seen by some people as patronizing rather than courageous.

Racial politics aside, the book reminds me strongly of the nineteenth-century English social novels in which middle-class authors addressed the evils of early industrial slums and factories. Like Benjamin Disraeli's SYBIL, it emphasizes that rich and poor, although they ostensibly live in the same city, are really "two nations." (When Joel ventures into Belgravia, the elegant neighborhood where the Lynleys live, it is a world so alien it might as well be the North Pole.) Like Dickens's books, it is narrated by a lofty omniscient voice and features a large cast of characters. Striving, upwardly mobile Kendra Osborne, the children's aunt, is trying to establish a massage practice, and her boyfriend, Dix, is a prize-winning bodybuilder. Teenaged Vanessa is a furious victim of sexual abuse. There are Dickensian villains, too, evil geniuses of the street who take pleasure in manipulating and torturing boys like Joel and Toby. The do-gooders --- social workers, writing teachers, mentors --- are mostly white and usually impotent, foreigners who don't really know the language of the neighborhood or its people.

Speaking of language, the dialogue in this book is largely in the black argot of London. There is a point to this --- time and again George emphasizes that educated people like Kendra are perfectly adept at standard English (what the kids call her "Lady Muck" voice) and can pull it out on appropriate occasions (as when talking to the authorities). Thus the see-sawing between slangy and refined accents comes to represent a tension that dominates the whole book: the choice between sticking with the lousy deal that fate has handed you and trying to escape into a better, less limited existence. But the dialect gets to be a bit much after a while --- I felt as if I were listening to a minstrel show. George's decision to reproduce the vernacular may be phonetically accurate, but I'm not sure that it serves her book well.

The novel is absorbing, albeit overlong. The characters are engaging and poignant; you want to protect them, prevent their descent into crime, peril, loss of dignity and selfhood. In crossing class and racial lines, George is doing something most genre writers wouldn't: setting out to expose the ugly underside of offenses so politely solved in the usual English mystery. This is a more realistic book than the usual thriller insofar as it recognizes that most crimes originate in problematic socioeconomic conditions ("[T]here were forces at work far larger than the Campbell children or their aunt, making North Kensington a place unsafe for harbouring or advancing dreams") and it has no detective hero to hand the reader a neat explanation-cum-solution.

But I'm not sure we read mysteries for a picture of society as it really is. I think we read them for reassurance: Their conventions make us feel that crimes aren't just random acts but possess some logic, and that those who commit them can be unmasked and punished. And I missed Lynley and (especially) Havers. Part of the pleasure of a series is encountering familiar people, in particular the guiding presence of brilliant crime-solvers who give shape to the story and balance to the moral scales. Although I respect George for challenging herself and her readers, WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER is more a worthy experiment than a successful mystery.

Still, I appreciate a writer who surprises me rather than banks on the same bestselling blueprint. What in heaven's name will Elizabeth George do next? Your guess is as good as mine.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

49 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious but flawed, October 16, 2007

By 

Dangle's girl (Astoria, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Came Before He Shot Her (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a definite departure from the Lynley series and is quite absorbing for the first several hundred pages. But I started to skim sections at around page 300 as situations and dialogue got repititious and the central action of the book was delayed beyond reason. It's admirable that George focused on a little-known aspect of British life, but some of the characters started bothering me--did all the black women have to have insatiable libidos? All the black men have to be either sociopathic or narcissistic? And the piling-on of misfortune was almost insulting to the characters: With such a litany of woe, one would expect a Columbine at the end, not a single murder. George is no Doestoevsky when it comes to exploring the criminal mind.
No, what was more interesting to me was why GEORGE chose to commit the murder in question. After lovingly crafting an interesting character over a series of books, she brutally kills her off for no real reason. Now George is forcing her readers to suffer through volumes of doleful mourning from a character who was never a barrel of laughs to begin with.
What's your excuse, Elizabeth?

37 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing and tragic, November 9, 2007

By 

S. J. Goodson (Norfolk, NE United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Came Before He Shot Her (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm writing this as a rebuttal to some of the reviews here. Much has been said about how bad and depressing this book is. I feel that these reviewers went into reading this book with the wrong expectations. This book is a description of a modern tragedy. It is very clear from the title and the back cover that this is the backstory of Helen Lynley's murder, that there is no happy ending to be found here. And how can the lead-up to a murder be anything other than depressing?

But the writing is brilliant. Time and again I found myself pulled along with the characters, wanting them to make better choices, even though I knew the ending in advance. If you're looking for a fun way to pass the time, this is not the book for you. But if you're looking for a book to make you think and feel and maybe cry a little; a book you experience, rather than just read; pick up What Came Before He Shot Her.