Just One Evil Act

Warning - potential spoiler

When an author I've loved disappoints me, I put them on probation.  I read a book or two (or more - Mary Higgins Clark teased me for nearly a decade with one good book out of every three), and if the series doesn't improve, I stop reading and donate my collection to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Some authors I give a little more leeway, like Elizabeth George.  Playing for the Ashes and For the Sake of Elena were so good that I gave her an extra book to redeem herself, and with Careless in Red, she showed that she deserved it.

She's back on probation. The best way I can describe Just One Evil Act is a total mess in which George defies logic to make life hell for Barbara Havers. The book opens a few hours after Believing the Lie ends, as Barbara frantically calls Lynley for help.  Her 9-year-old neighbor, Hidayyah Azhar has been kidnapped by her mother, Angela Uppman. Taymullah Azhar and Angela had never married (because he'd never divorced his wife who lives with their children and her parents in another part of London) and there's no father listed on Hidayyah's birth certificate.  Lynley confirms that there's nothing the police can do, so Barbara and Azhar hire a private investigator, who also claims to be unable to find Hidayyah.  A few months later, Angela and her Italian partner show up in London - someone kidnapped Hidayyah again, and of course they suspect her father. After a few hundred pages of shifting POV between Barbara, Lynley, Hidayyah's captor, and an Italian policeman, George returns a frightened but otherwise unharmed Hidayyah to her parents and they appear to work out a custody agreement.

If George had left it there, she'd have a mediocre mystery novel half as long as the incoherent doorstopper I slogged through. Angela dies from an e. coli infection about a week after Hidayyah's rescue, and Barbara learns from the quintuple-crossing (I think - I lost track of their deceptions) private investigators that Azhar (a microbiologist) had deceived her. I figured out the method and true culprit almost immediately, and found the motive contrived.  I also thought Lynley's subplot (a romance with a veterinarian who also skates for Birmingham's roller derby team) was unnecessary and uninvolving. 

The worst part, though, was how George treated Barbara Havers. Barbara has always been rough-edged, poorly dressed, and full of attitude.  This time, George went out of her way to describe her, and to do so as completely unattractive.  She's shifted Havers from merely prickly to obnoxiously insubordinate and deserving of the termination we spend the book expecting. As I've said in prior reviews, Barbara is a more interesting character - and better detective - than her aristocratic boss. So why did George decide to, well, trash her while perhaps permanently damaging her growing friendship with her neighbors?  I already have the next installment, so I'll probably read it.  I'm not looking forward to it, because I'm afraid it's the last Lynley/Havers book I'll read.