CARELESS IN RED
By Elizabeth George
Hodder & Stoughton/ Hardcover/544 pages/ $32.64 with GST/
Books Kinokuniya/***

Elizabeth George has redeemed herself - a little - with her latest book, Careless In Red.

All that bad press about her previous book, What Came Before He Shot Her, must have pierced her through and through.

That novel, a departure from her usual sex, crime and gore series, minus all the wonderful characters in the Lynley books, was a bad exercise in social commentary: Society, Bad Genes and Bad Upbringing leads to senseless shooting.

But fans who remember George's early books wouldn't be too happy with the latest Lynley novel either. Oh yes, she brought back the dishy Lord Lynley - this time, unkempt, gaunt, dishevelled but with posh accent intact.

He is hoping to get his wife (the her who got shot) out of his system by tramping the coastlines of Cornwall where, lo and behold, the ex-New Scotland Yard homicide detective stumbles on a dead body.

It's a gorgeous 18-year-old who fell from a cliff while abseiling.

The back story is George-esque. Tangled families, deceitful histories, lies and more lies. And plenty of sex of the adulterous and illicit kind. What it lacked was a videotape.

So Thomas Lynley gets roped into the investigation by a middle-aged divorcee who runs the investigation show over there in Cornwall. And, of course, she has a backstory too - a dishy ex-husband who happens to be a cop as well.

The middle-aged love gone sour and turning sweet is really a lot more interesting than the spark George tries so hard to light between Lynley and an intriguingly named Daidre Trahair.

In fact, he goes unprofessionally ga-ga gooey over this prime suspect, and poor dead Lady Helen Clyde (the her who got shot) finds herself retreating further and further from his mind as he gets shaved, dressed and elegant again.

So what is it that fans will not like?

The crime story itself has shades of incest, adultery, illegitimate children, cuckolded husband and mad mother - all the usual ingredients of a great Lynley book.

But it won't be too far into the book before any intelligent reader realises who the murderer is and why the murder was committed. That delicious surprise element of who and why - always the most outrageous of all explanations - is gone.

More than that, George tries to make the Trahair character exude a sort of mystery - and fails. Let's hope the failure was intentional and that this character will be kept out of the next Lynley instalment, or killed off in it.

It's a good thing, therefore, that George resurrects Lynley's sidekick, Sergeant Barbara Havers, and her cloud of cigarette smoke. Havers remains true to form: rough and tough outside but tender at the core.

She saved this book.

If you like this, read: With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George (2006, $17.07 with GST, Books Kinokuniya), where Inspector Lynley goes on the hunt for a serial killer murdering young men in London.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Jun 8, 2008.