For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley Series #5) » (Reprint)

The reigning queen of the British mystery, it turns out, is an Ohio native living in Washington State. Best known for her Inspector Lynley series, Elizabeth George says that what drives her books is the psychological goings-on of her characters. She doesn't even mind, she says, if readers figure out the killer before the end -- the motive will always be a surprise.

Elena Weaver was a surprise to anyone meeting her for the first time. In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings she exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her walls. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare from her home in London, in Cambridge—where Elena was a student at St. Stephen's College—her father and his second wife each had their own very different image of the girl. As for Elena, she lived a life of casual and intense physical and emotional relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve—until someone, lying in wait along the route she ran every morning, bludgeoned her to death.

Unwilling to turn the killing over to the local police, the university calls in New Scotland Yard. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, enter the rarefied world of Cambridge University, where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions.

For both officers, the true identity of Elena Weaver proves elusive. Each relationship the girl left behind casts new light both on Elena and on those people who appeared to know her best—from an unsavory Swedish-born Shakespearean professor to the brooding head of the Deaf Students Union.

What's more, Elena's father, a Cambridge professor under consideration for a prestigious post, is a man with his own dark secrets. While his past sins make him neurotically dedicated to Elena and blind to her blacker side, present demons drive him toward betrayal.

Kirkus Reviews

The fifth outing for Scotland Yard's Inspector Lynley (rich, sleek aristocrat) and Sergeant Havers (rough-edged, bitter plain- Jane)—this time called up to Cambridge to investigate the brutal murder of a sexy, unstable, deaf student. Who ambushed Elena Weaver during one of her usual early- morning runs and pummeled her to death? Suspects abound—especially once an autopsy reveals that Elena was pregnant. She had accused one teacher of sexual harassment, had been having an affair with another (married) one. She'd also been involved with a deaf-rights activist. Meanwhile, she was having stormy times with her overprotective father, a Cambridge don hoping for a major new appointment, and with her edgy stepmother. And is it just coincidence that the woman who finds Elena's body, an important local artist, was the sometime mistress of Elena's father? As usual, George lays on the psychosexual Sturm und Drang with a sure, if slightly heavy, hand; the dialogue occasionally thickens into awkward, stagy speeches. Also as usual, the sleuths contend with personal anguish: Havers must deal with a senile mum; Lynley continues his tediously drawn-out courtship of Lady Helen—an overwrought imitation of Lord Peter and Miss Vane. But, though uneven and puffy, this is George's best work since her debut (A Great Deliverance)—a generally absorbing job in the P.D. James manner, without the excesses and missteps of the other Lynley/Havers outings.