Rating: 
Summary: It's not her best, but it's still really good.
Review: Good writing, interesting plot, and I don't need to love every character. Definitely worth it!
Rating: 
Summary: All Over The Place
Review: This book goes from WWII to the Guernsey Islands, makes brief stops in London, and then heads back to the Islands again. All this location hopping simply pads out a story that could have been told better. George is known, or has been known, for her tightly-knit plots and well-drawn major and minor characters.This story, however, just meanders all over the place. Instead of introducing aspects of people and places that lead to a conclusion, there are various subplots (the aged WWII collaborator, Paul's loutish older brother) that add nothing to the book except extra pages. Plus, the use of Deborah as the main focus was a horrendous choice. Every time she has appeared before, she's been whiny and unfocused, always attempting to define herself by external means. This book is no exception. In "Missing Joseph", it's because she can't have children. In "APoH", she's all upset because she gave a gallery showing that was rained out, and her pictures failed to set the art world on fire. Poor baby. Throughout the rest of the book, she crowbars herself into the investigation, acts like a complete spoiled child to the point of possibly contaminating evidence, and continually whines about how everyone treats her as a child. Frankly, if I were Simon, I would have sent her packing rather than let her continue to make a hash of everything - and told her to grow the heck up in the bargain. The book claims to be a mystery, but large chunks are centered around Deborah and her problems, and it drags the book horribly each time EG has Deborah attempt any type of introspection because Deborah is just too shallow and uninteresting. Please, please bring back Lynley and Havers in the next book.
Rating:
Summary: Less would have been more
Review: When Eliz. George is very good she is the best, but when she is wordy and unedited we all suffer. Surely, someone at her publishing house could have helped the author cut this book by one third. Not only because she become redundant and tedious, but because the flimsy plot does not bear the weight of so much verbiage. In fact, the plot does not really gel -- the pieces begin to come together -- until page 487. Even die-hard George fans are bound to find this one both too much and not enough.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I think it says it all when a reader whose favourite author is Elizabeth George can't finish this book. That's me. I have been really trying to go past half-way, where it was, actually, a struggle to get, for a couple of weeks and gave up. No need to analyse the reasons - just the fact that I had been amazed by most of her earlier novels (especially captivated by Deception in his Mind), put her up in my Favourite author box but couldn't read this one is enough. It could be the lack of Helen and Lynley and Barbara, it could be the setting that was depressing, it could be the length, but mostly, it was just boring. The characters were boring, not shallow nor undeveloped. They were simply not interesting. I just didn't care to find out why and how that person died. It's really such a pity, because Ms. George can do so much with her characters and has such a lovely style of writing. I don't know what happened here, but I'm so disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A Place of Hiding
Review: How sad that yet another Elizabeth George book just doesn't come up to the standard from her earlier books like "A great Deliverance" and "Missing Joseph". This book needed some serious editing since - it was way too long and full of meaningless minutiae. The characters were boring and the plot lacked the great mystery that we have come to expect for EG books. I don't undertand why Miss George insists on moving away from her successful characters of Lynley and Havers since these are the people that have made her books famous. Their characters are real and interesting unlike Simon and Deborah in "A Place of Hiding" I'm sorry to say that Deborah needs a kick up the pants - she is a spolit brat and Simon is a control freak, but none the less he doesn't deserve to be married to someone like Deborah. Come on Elizabeth, give us what we all want and write about Lynley and Havers again and don't feel you have to write 500 pages, 300 would be just fine!
Rating: 
Summary: EG in Hiding
Review: Clearly Ms. George researched her setting, and provided some intriguing characterizations. Unfortunately we are stuck with looking through the eyes of Deborah and Simon. I don't understand how such an innovative and creative writer like EG can continually feed us this pablum of a relationship between Simon and Deborah. Yes she is very whiney as others have mentioned. And frankly I don't get it. What is EG trying to tell us? Why would she spend 511 pages outlining a totally windblown character like Deborah? What insight does Deborah bring to the party? She spends a lot of the book in constant battle with Simon (when she is the one who wants him to save her friends). And to top it off it is Simon who apologizes to her for being a lout (even though it turns out that his assessment of the situation is the correct one).
This book is hardly a winner for EG.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's George Hiding Her Next Good Story? Not Here.
Review: As an Elizabeth George fan I find her one of the more frustrating authors to follow. When she's in top form (A Great Deliverance, Playing for the Ashes) no one writes better character-driven mysteries. When she's off, her efforts are at best, uneven. After a spate of so-so books, I was looking forward to A Place of Hiding as a return to form. I was disappointed. What's become a common problem with George is her sheer abundance of words. She's been too wordy and too long for several books now, and a merciless editorial pen would do her a world of good. Do we really need an entire paragraph devoted to describing the relative whiteness of a person's laundry? I'm all for detail and I love long books, but there is a limit. When the writing bogs down the momentum of the story and muddles it into an incomplete mess, it's time to do some judicious trimming. The other problem I had with this book is the focus on the main characters. Lynley and Havers are given a book off to concentrate on St. James and his wife Deborah. As minor characters interacting with Lynley and co. I find them interesting enough, but sadly their turn at the spotlight proves just how shallow they are. St. James comes off as a cold, controlling bastard who is STILL agonizing about his disability, and Deborah comes off as a whiny, immature brat. This story serves neither character well, and only illuminates the fact that they can't carry a story on their own. My other problem was the less than subtle interjection of The Main Theme, i.e. people's unrealistic expectations of each other, and what they feel they are 'owed.' An interesting idea, but one that wasn't intergrated very well into the main mystery. And the mystery? There really wasn't one. George's attempts to plant red herrings and focus attention on other suspects never really pans out, weakening the whole story at the expense of her moral. There were also loose threads aplenty, for instance, what was Val hiding from her husband exactly? We get hints but then the entire subplot never goes anywhere. I wish George has taken some time to really polish this story, since I think it could have risen to the middle/upper tier of her better works, however this was not to be. As it stands, this is a mediocre effort that will likely only appeal to die-hard fans of George, or St. James/Deborah devotees. Plus a little back story on where the heck Guernsey is would have been very helpful. I managed to deduce quite a bit from the context of the book, but a better explanation of it would have served her many American fans well.
Rating:
Summary: DEB THE WHINER!!
Review: I have been an avid fan of Ms. George's book from the very beginning and can't believe this is her third bad book in a row.
I never could stand Deb, everybody puts up with her whining and treats her like a spoiled child, well she does act like one. I like Simon and she was so mean to him in this book. The scene where she stalked away from him and he limped after her, in order to finish a conversation, really really made me see red! Get a grip lady!! You deserve a good spanking and start thinking of others instead of being so self centered, expecially your handicapped husband!!!!!!!!!
BRING BACK TOMMY, HELEN AND HAVERS OR THIS WILL BE THE LAST BOOK
I WASTE MY TIME ON!! I'm truly disappointed that one of my very favortie authors has let her fans down three times in a row.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I never thought I would encounter an Elizabeth George mystery as bad as this one. Her prior books have been riveting page-turners that kept me up all night and then gave me nightmares when I finally went to sleep. This book, in stark contrast, was, in a word, dull. I got about half way through it, and skimmed the rest. The characters were both boring and improbable, and there were no flashes of intriguing domesticity to hold my interest. The relationship between Simon and Deborah is absurd; not only does their marriage seem doomed, as far as I can tell there was never any reason to imagine that it could have been anything else. This is a poorly thought-out, poorly conceived, and poorly written book. I hope that Ms George can redeem herself in her next book; otherwise, it will the last one I buy in hardback (or, indeed, at all).
Rating:
Summary: Deliver us from Deborah!
Review: Thought it was only me that wanted to be rid of Deborah. She's a teeth-grating whiney act to take in small sub-plots - since she couldn't carry a tea tray, it's no mystery she couldn't carry this plot, such as it was. I doggedly read on, hoping that Deb would somehow be written out of future Georges -- alas, no. Nothing about her is believable or sympathtic - please, no more of her and her self-pitying blather.
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