Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This dreary convoluted tome, Believing the Lie, stands as testament to the fact that the life went out of Elizabeth George's books about the time she killed off Helen. This follows the basic formula--many characters and many subplots--but the primary plot is completely implausible. Lynley is sent off on a "secret" mission to see if the accidental death of one of the Fairclough clan was really an accident. He blunders around for days--although the time frame is not very clear because how could Zed, the tabloid reporter (yet another subplot), meet and fall in love in those few day?? Lynley discovers what any half-way intelligent private detective could have discovered in half the time--and with far less fallout. Deborah and St. James go along to help--but since this whole thing is off the books, how they are going to submit expenses isn't clear. Maybe rich people just donate days of their time to solving imagined crimes by other rich people. Havers spends most of the novel having an anxiety attack over having her hair cut and getting new clothes. Really???? Isabelle, the super that Lynley is bonking, spends the entire novel pissed out of her mind because she doesn't know what Lynley is up to and Havers does. The poor dead guy was gay, a perfect opening for just about every tired homophobic cliche George could find. Good grief. The LGBT community seems responsible for family destruction, duplicity, and self-loathing--not to mention a little sprinkling of pedophilia and child pornography. Poor Deborah ends up with the worst role of all--a pregnancy/child-wanting obsessed nutcase chasing after another unfortunate woman who wants a child. How does all this connect, you might ask? Well, believe me, by the time you get to the end of the book, you won't care.