I am a Lynley-Havers fan. As well as a Elizabeth George fan. My only complaint is the length of the novel. I think it could have been pared down from it’s 700 pages. If that is my only gripe to get to read a thriller as good as this one then I’m fine with the length.

Elizabeth George is a master at writing psychological suspense mysteries. And I am a big fan of the “ Inspector Lynley series “. So i looked forward to reviewing her newest offering set in a medieval university town In Shropshire. The novel did not disappoint.

I am not a fan usually of books with graphic violence. But this series is an exception to the rule. Why—because George is such a masterful writer that her books are full of Shakespearean characters who are fascinating and plot twists that are well thought out and unexpected but believable. Detective Inspector Lynley and Detective Sargent Barbara Havers are such an interesting duo— so unlike each other but such a good team at solving crimes—that they always make interesting reading.

As this novel opens, Havers is sent along as an assistant to another detective to determine if the suicide of an Anglican clergyman—who was in custody in an understaffed police station—was handled correctly. Budget cuts have wreaked havoc on police staffing in this university town. Havers soon suspects that the supposed suicide might not have been suicide but murder—and that things are not as they seem on the surface.

Thank you Viking and NetGalley for the ARC of this book and for allowing me to review it.

This is the 20th Inspector Lynley book and it is a big one with 704 pages. It takes place in contemporary Britain with character who work at Scotland Yard in London.

Ian Druitt, a popular deacon in Ludlow, Shropshire, was discovered dead in the local police station after he was brought in on suspicion of pedophilia. His father, a wealthy brewer, suspected that the death was murder and had his local member of Parliament request further investigation. The father was threatening a lawsuit. So Scotland Yard sent Deputy Chief Inspector Isabelle Ardery and Detective Sargent Barbara Havers down to Ludlow to investigate. Ardery, an alcoholic, was coping with the results of a messy divorce. Havers was basically on probation for poor behavior in the past. Ardery was charged with looking for enough errors to justify a transfer for Havers to a provincial post.

So when the two women began their investigation, Ardery was intent on a quick affirmation of the first reports. Havers began to uncover inconsistencies in the evidence and wanted to dig deeper. However Ardery was in charge and the two officers returned to London after a few days. Havers shared her skepticism with Lynley and that was leaked to the deacon’s father.

After some political pressure for a deeper investigation, Lynley and Havers were sent back to Ludlow. At the center of this book is the manner in which some parents of teens seek to control their children’s lives even after the teens are grown and should be making their own choices. Another theme is lies that people tell to protect their friends and family and the consequences of those lies.

The author is an American but her best selling series is about contemporary Britain and includes both slang common to the Brits and social problems in that country today. This is my first Inspector Lynley book but I am interested in reading others in this series. The book was well written and the characters well developed.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a free advance electronic copy of this book for an unbiased review.
I have been an Elizabeth George fan for many years now, and time hasn't taken away anything from her ability to spin a good yarn with real characters. I do so love Barbara Havers, so I was thrilled to see her again in this story. I'm less thrilled to see Isabelle Ardery, but I have to admit that Ms. George draws her in a way that makes her a bit more sympathetic this time around.

This story takes us to a small college town and examines what happens when budgets have been stretched so tight that there is no policing force of which to speak, just a community liaison officer. Needless to say, it's nothing good. For me, there were some elements of the story that were unclear, especially surrounding the denouement and a supporting character's behavior and decisions, but I enjoy her writing and dialogue so much that I can't say it really mars my enjoyment of the book in the end.

The B-plots are somewhat less compelling than they could be, but in looking back I can see that they were necessary in order to build the narrative and get the reader to the conclusion along with the police. BUT I don't know that I entirely buy that Havers would be willing to sign on for a tap-dancing class with Dorothea Harriman (and pretend to practice nightly while on assignment in Ludlow; but Havers *is* a pleaser, no doubt). Likewise, Ardery is rather far beyond b!tch in this outing, but it's necessary, perhaps, for her to turn a corner, and I love to hate her.

The dialogue, as always, sparkles. George has an ear for how people speak, and she knows how to use it. These characters are old friends by now, so we all know what they would say and how they would say it (even if I don't necessarily think they would act in the ways). For us die-hards, there will always be situations we want resolved (WHY is Tommy still wasting his time with the inscrutable Daidre?), but leaving them lie for a while longer is probably closer to reality.

This book will be a great time for fans; possibly less so for newbies just coming aboard. I always recommend Elizabeth George to readers who are looking for more of a novel and less of a garden-variety mystery, and this book doesn't change that. When I think of franchises that have run their course (Stephanie Plum comes to mind), Tommy & Co. never join that group - George keeps them fresh, and they rarely tread the same ground twice.

This well-played mystery with George's usual dose of morbidness skewers the presence of corrupt individuals in the police department, but even more it blasts the venality, alcoholic personality disorder and amorality of the police administrators.

The death of a deacon while in police custody is quickly put down to suicide. However, something about the scene seems off to Havers, and she decides to dig deeper. Soon, it becomes clear that residents of the quiet little town possess secrets aplenty. This page-turner will surely thrill diehard George fans, and garner new ones, too.

You can’t go wrong with Elizabeth George. This series remains fresh and keeps on getting better with each new book.

Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers work well together, although they are vastly different in appearance and behavior. Havers is unkempt, impulsive, and laces her speech with off-color remarks. Lynley, on the other hand, is immaculately attired, urbane, and dignified. Despite their dissimilarities, Lynley and Havers have a great deal in common. Both are insightful, thorough, and more interested in attaining justice than in kowtowing to their superiors.

Lynley is largely absent at the beginning of Elizabeth George's "The Punishment She Deserves." An unhappy Havers is forced to take a wretched road trip out of London with her nemesis, Detective Chief Superintendent Isabelle Ardery. DCS Ardery has contempt for Havers, whom she hopes to transfer to a remote outpost as a punishment for Barbara's impudence and disobedience. Ardery and Havers arrive in the town of Ludlow to determine whether members of local law enforcement mishandled the investigation into the alleged suicide of Deacon Ian Druitt, a much beloved clergyman and humanitarian. Clive Druitt, Gerald's well-connected and wealthy father, is putting pressure on New Scotland Yard to reopen the case and find out what really happened to his son.

This novel is a whopping six-hundred-and ninety pages, far longer than it needs to be. The characters include a delusional alcoholic; a community support officer who keeps a close eye on Ludlow's citizenry; two mothers obsessed with micromanaging the lives of their grown children; and a group of self-destructive, hard-drinking, and promiscuous college-age kids. Although the writing is serviceable, the author, who is American, is too eager to show off her command of British slang and idioms. (One irritant is her use of the words "full stop" at least a dozen times.) There is a bit of gentle humor provided by Barbara Havers who, in spite of having two left feet, is pushed by a colleague into taking tap dancing lessons. Those who have admired Lynley and Havers for years will want to read "The Punishment She Deserves," but not everyone will be mesmerized by this heavy-handed and awkwardly constructed tale of deceit, family dysfunction, corruption, and sexual exploitation.

An altogether fun read! I found the parent/adult children dynamics interesting, although sometimes a bit difficult to sort out who was parent to who. But all-in-all an enjoyable read and as always, having Lynley and Havers together was a treat! #ThePunishmentSheDeserves #NetGalley

It's hard to believe that I've been reading this series for thirty years now! Barbara Havers (one of my two favorite fictional policewomen) is dispatched to a quiet college town (initially with the ever-difficult Isabelle Ardery) where a respected deacon has apparently committed suicide while in the custody of the local PCSO, or Police Community Support Officer (yes, I had to look it up), a uniformed civilian serving in the stead of a constable.. Of course, nothing is as it first appears, and there are many strands to the mystery, including some mothers who seriously refuse to cut the apron strings, some binge drinking, promiscuous college students, and an unlikely homeless man. Intricately plotted, extremely well-written, this could be read as a stand-alone, but the reader would lose a great deal of of background on the relationships among the various characters, as well as the enjoyment of seeing the development of Havers' character over the course of the series.

It has been too long since I read/reviewed an Elizabeth George Novel (since August, 2015, in fact, for the release of A Banquet of Consequences). Some things don’t change: as I said then, “I LOVE Elizabeth George, and have been reading the Inspector Lynley novels (or, as I prefer to call them, the Lynley-Havers novels) since the mid-1990s when introduced to them by a fellow librarian when we were stuck in an airport.”

For those familiar with the series, I’ll start with a couple of things I hoped for with Banquet back in 2015, and which I was still hoping for as 2018's Punishment  arrived: One of them involved Barbara’s neighbors, the Azhars, Taymullah and Haddiyah, who as I noted in my 2015 review “…had fled to Pakistan, and I admit I was hoping for an update on this whole complex relationship.” And, as in 2015, when I said: “Familiar characters appear, including Winston Nkata, Isabelle Ardery (Lynley’s former lover and current boss to both him and Detective Sergeant Havers), Daidre the veterinarian who seemed to be a likely candidate to bring Lynley out of his ongoing mourning following his wife’s murder a couple of books ago…like getting an update on old friends.”

Neither of those sub-plotlines was addressed in Banquet, but I continued to hold out hope as I received “The Punishment She Deserved,” (thanks to Penguin Group VIKING and NetGalley).

As the story begins, Barbara Havers is in deep poop as she is partnered with Isabelle Ardery. They are sent to Ludlow, a small historic village that has been rocked by the death of the local deacon. It looks like suicide, but there are rumors of pedophilia, which has the deacon’s father outraged to the point of complaining to his local member of Parliament – so of course Scotland Yard is brought in and the two women are assigned to review the work done by the local police when they investigated the man’s unexpected death.

Isabelle wants to just do a cursory review and get the hell out of Ludlow, back to her demons and personal problems surrounding her ex-husband and their two sons. But Barbara can’t ignore the things that she sees: they just nag at her, and she tries to pursue every lead she can despite Isabelle ordering her to just review the prior report, and don’t open any cans of worms. Anyone familiar with Barbara knows this is not bloody likely!

As usual, George introduces characters in such a way that we quickly feel we KNOW them. For example, Finn Freeman, a young man around whom much of the facts seem to revolve, “…wasn’t a picture either. His clothes…favored excessively tattered jeans and an extremely threadbare flannel shirt. He wore sandals…but his black-apainted toenails did not delight. On his reight anjle was a piece of braided leather, and a bulbous know of the same material formed an earring tht looked like an excrescence on hius left lobe. He actually might not have been a bad looking young man, but taken as a whole, he was something that might have been created by Munch.”

And I love the description of the Underground station: the…” crowd in the underground…ignored one another as per usual, jostling about like kittens struggling for a nursing position while also attempting to text, read their newspapers, listen to…music via earbuds…”

And her language used for various characters is incredibly revelatory as to their nature. For example, Thomas Lynley (aka Lord Asherton) gets out of his car and looks across the street: “…the banner announcing Titus Andronicus had lettering in which the uppercase letters both transformed into pools of blood beneath them. At least the audience would be forewarned, he thought.” PERFECT!

By contrast, Trevor Freeman, owner of a local fitness center and husband of a Clover Freeman, a local high-ranking policewoman, is involved in a debate with her, and might have prevailed “…had he managed to keep his bloody wits about him, but he kept getting sidelined by his dick.”

The plot is good (especially once Lynley is on the scene, working with Havers), and her language manages to make me learn without making me feel stupid: “…his demands…became as furious as they were adamantine.” (yay! A new word!) There are also typical Britishisms, such as chuffed (opposite meaning to what I suspected) and weir. And, there are several uses of words for which I THOUGHT I knew the meaning, but learned I was wrong (or ignorant of the specific use in this book): scourge, grass and caravan all had meaning different from what generally think when I encounter them.

Alongside the language and characterization, there is the excellent police procedural and complex plotting: as Clover tells Trevor, “The truth never means a thing. When it comes to innocence or guilt, the trut is the first casualty in an investigation.” Because much of the plot turns on the inadequate police staffing in small towns (based on reality in the U.K. these days), we see a clear contrast between the methods of Scotland Yard and those of the local police, somewhat beleaguered by the reductions in staff.

Overall, a very satisfying read. SPOILER AHEAD: I am, however, still waiting for the advancement of the subplots mentioned at the start of this review. Nonetheless, five stars.

As I wasn’t too enamored with Elizabeth George’s last two Lynsey novels, I started this one with trepidation. However, I should not have been concerned. I really felt like this one was one of her best installments. As it begins, Ardury and Havers are sent to Ludlow to follow up on an suicide investigation. Due to Ardury’s increasing alcohol dependency clues are missed and not followed up. Barbara Havers is tasked in writing the report only to be conflicted of writing the report fully truthful or the truth that Ardury requires. From there, Lynley becomes involved and both Havers and Lynley are dispatched back to Ludlow for a full investigation. Definitely not one to be missed.

This masterful psychological thriller and multiple plots mystery does not disappoint. It's always a treat to read the dialogue between Lynley and Havers as they investigate a suicide/murder.

George keeps lots of balls in the air in this long and engrossing mystery that starts with political pressure to investigate the suicide of a Deacon while in police custody. Lynley and Havers are eventually, of course, at the heart of the investigation and they manage to unravel the many complexities that confront them. The Punishment She Deserves features themes of personal failings, control, and loss. Readers will be be kept on the edges of their proverbial seats as they work not only to identify the killer and the reason for the killing but to figure out to whom the book's title really refers. George continues to maintain the high quality of this well-received series.