A Great Deliverance (Inspector Lynley Mysteries, No. 1)
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.
Now into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an axe in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry."
Yet as Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale's dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a shattering series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley—and in their own lives as well.
Now into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an axe in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry."
Yet as Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale's dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a shattering series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley—and in their own lives as well.
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Community Reviews
So many detectives, so little time! I didn't plan on falling in love with Lynley and Havers [and Simon and Deborah and Helen ...], but I did. Unlike Watson in the Sherlock Holmes's stories, Havers is also an investigator, and excellent at her job (even when she's dripping vitriol in anyone's path who upsets her), and Lynley is as upper-crust as one can get in England without being on the balcony for the Trooping of the Colors but with a vulnerable and caring side and the need to make up for his so-called aristocratic life by being down in the trenches, solving a headless murder case in York. Fast-paced, enthralling, suspenseful ... I couldn't put it down and can't wait to start the next one. It's been a while since a detective series did that for me. My only slight criticism is that the ending came down like Everest's biggest avalanche; I could barely catch my breath before the next storm of information rushed by. I had to go back and read it to make sure I [the reader who never solves the case] understood every clue and red herring. If you want a detective to follow, Inspector Lynley's your man.
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