A Place of Hiding

Rating:
Summary: Makes up for I, Richard
Review: I have been engrossed by A Place of Hiding. It's not George at her best, but it's a really interesting book and change. I disagree with the L.A. reviewer who seems to be taking much too clinical an approach. The book is a really good read, good enough that I forgive George for her cop-out anthology of last year--something that Dick Francis once did, that Elmore Leonard did (though no where near as bad as Cornwell's ploy with Isle of Dogs), and no doubt other authors fatigued by their characters or stressed by contractual obligations. Like another reviewer, I missed Havers, but it was interesting to see Simon and Deborah better developed as characters.

Rating:
Summary: Dog abuse adds nothing to this book!
Review: Having been a big fan of Ms. George over the years, I was very unhappy to read several accounts of animal cruelty in her books. Pelting a dog with stones and having a key dog character come to near death seems harsh. Shame on you, Ms. George!

Rating:
Summary: Better than her most recent novels...
Review: Like other reviewers, I have read all of Elizabeth George's Lynley/St James novels. I found this to be a very good book - and much preferred it to at least her last two novels. The character development is great (with the possible exception of the "ex wife" who was exceptionally bothersome). The mystery itself is great, with any of a host of possible murderers. The marital tension between the St James is also bothersome - but very "realistic". The author's use now of some southern California characters and location (her real home) is innovative.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Storyline
Review: Why some people do what they do is what, A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George is all about. I found the characters, dialogue, and plot, intresting indeed...a very appealing combination.

John Savoy
Savoy International
Motion Pictures Inc.
Beverly Hills, California

Rating:
Summary: A Substandard Effort
Review: Some good plot synopses given previously.

Am I the only one who thinks Deb is sort of a whiner? I love the Lynley/Helen/Havers relationships, and I like Simon, too, although I wish he didn't seem so insubstantial and insecure. But Deb just annoys me, and therefore a book that focused on her and her feelings annoyed me. Ms. George's books keep getting longer and longer, and the plots just can't stand up to all the talky weight that drags them down. Crisper pacing and tighter plotting would help, and cutting the extraneous information, dialogue, and red herrings that really don't serve much purpose would also help. It would be nice if she'd return to the writing/plotting skill she showed earlier in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Another exploration of the human condition
Review: Nobody - and I repeat, NOBODY - does a better job at exploring and excavating the many dark and secret areas of the soul that Elizabeth George. The one criterion I judge a novel's quality is - Do the characters become so real that I think about them afterwards? In almost every case (excepting the short stories) this has been the case.

Unlike many writers, Ms. George does not live in the Community of the Young and Restless. While it may be easy to write about beautiful, carefree "young adults", the reality is - as a French movie director remarked in an observation of American cinema - the world does not consist of 15-21 year old people and their earnest angst. After reading A PLACE OF HIDING, who can forget Frank, China or especially, Paul?

The action is moved from England this time, a British isle that was occupied by the Germans in WWII, and the characters are the inhabitants of this land. A few chapters introduce us to the main characters, the major one remaining shadowy and furtive to the end. On every level - emotional, mental, physical, psychic - a web of deceit and disloyalty strikes.While I was disappointed that Havers was not present, the play between Simon and Deborah charted new waters in unexplored territory.

George has a talent for making us uncomfortable because we all have either been in these positions or know full well someone who has. As she has stated previously, the majority of people live lives of quiet desperation, only revealing their innermost thoughts and desires when one least expects it. The writing is again superb, exalted, and the multiple conclusions - as each and every end is tied - hit with the force of a sledge hammer, particularly the final scene in the graveyard.

This is a vacation book non par excellence! Another intelligent, sometimes witty, always erudite addition to any collection.

Rating:
Summary: holds your interest till the very end..
Review: Teh only reason i held out the 5 was i thought she was too descriptive.. in things that didn't matter.. such as the grounds and shrubs etc. i just skipped over that stuff and i loved this book.. she's one of my favorite authors..

Rating:
Summary: Too many secrets, lies, and red herrings.
Review: Elizabeth George overdoes it a bit in "A Place of Hiding," her new novel featuring Simon and Deborah St. James. Deborah's old friends China and Cherokee Rivers (I am not making up these names) are in a spot of trouble on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel.

China has been arrested for the murder of Guy Brouard, a womanizing millionaire, and Deborah refuses to believe that her old and dear friend could be capable of such a crime. The passionate and emotional Deborah and her dispassionate forensic scientist husband, Simon, travel to Guernsey to start their own investigation into the crime.

At over five hundred pages, "A Place of Hiding" meanders along at a sluggish pace. George hits the reader over the head with repetitious descriptions of Brouard's activities, of his ineffectual son, Adrian, and of his vicious and greedy ex-wives. In addition, the book has so much going on that the reader needs a scorecard to keep track of the dozens of events that occur one after the other. George throws a number of red herrings into the mix in an apparent effort to keep the ending a surprise. A subplot about Deborah's and Simon's lack of communication does not generate much electricity and it serves to drag the book down even further.

There are too many characters and far too many twists and turns in this book. A more focused and well-defined plot and more concisely and skillfully drawn characters would have helped make "A Place of Hiding" the compelling mystery that Ms. George meant it to be.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent mystery
Review: After what I consider to be the brilliant panoramic psychological masterpiece that was A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George here shifts the focus back to a more traditional story of crime and more onto her main characters once more, in a book that is sure to please all her fans immensely, despite their opinion of her last book.

Here, she takes the story to the Channel Island of Gurnsey, an enclosed community very much with its own individual identity, which she evokes very well indeed. One morning, Guy Brouard, millionaire and generous benefactor of many projects on the island, is killed on the beach after his morning swim, and his death will send disastrous ripples through not only his own fractured family, but the fragile community too.

A plethora of evidence is discovered that clearly implicates someone in the China, one China River, an American staying on the island for a few days after couriering a package for Guy over from the USA., and she is swiftly arrested. Desperate to prove his sister's innocence, and having found no aid at the American embassy, Cherokee River (their mother was a hippie, of course) rushes to England to enlist the help of the only person he can think of: Deborah St James, China's old friend from youth. Maybe there is something she can do, perhaps? However, when even a word from friend in the Metropolitan Police Thomas Lynley has no influence upon the Gurnsey police, Deborah (with Cherokee and husband Simon in tow) hurries to the island to help save her friend, and to atone for past failings.

Fans of Elizabeth George will love this, If they don't mind that Deborah and Simon take the lead rather than the usual partnership of Lynley and Havers (if you are at all reasonable, you shouldn't). Certainly I found it refreshing and rather nice that she's brought these two characters out of the shadows a little more and given their relationship an almost incredible amount of depth all in a single book. George is adept at creating realistic and engrossing relationships between her main characters.

But, then, character has always been George's strong point. There are very few writers today who can create so many completely rounded and whole and human characters, make them all equally interesting and give them all equal shrift and importance within a single novel.

And it's not as if she skimps on plot here, either. It's developed, multi-stranded, paced very well indeed, has a very good solution and is wholly satisfying. She tells her story with beautiful and incredibly rich prose, and in my mind is probably the finest American exponent of this type of traditional British mystery (even if she doesn't always get it 100% right, but that doesn't matter.) Existing fans will love this book and may think it her strongest in a while, and I would also encourage anyone whose never read her before and likes this kind of book to begin with A Place Of Hiding as soon as possible.

Rating:
Summary: Unsatisfying; wrong take on childhood trauma.
Review: I have read all of Elizabeth George's books and liked them (except for the disappointing early short story book, her latest before this one, 'I, Richard', which I thought was her latest novel and wasn't up to her later work). This one left me not with a sense of satisfaction but with a cloying sense of dark, vague disappointment.

First, I found I missed Barbara Havers, Lynley's sidekick, who wasn't mentioned once. I found I wanted to 'see' her again, especially after the disappointing movie made of an early George book, in which Barbara was severely miscast. (Maybe this is why George elected to write a story without her, who knows.)

Second, as a trauma psychotherapist, I take issue with George's perspective on childhood trauma in this book, which she, in the voice of the female investigator, a photographer, hammers again and again on the theme that one should snap out of it if one is depressed, embittered, and not doing too well in life. In fact, it isn't that easy -- trauma experiences are held in the brain and body as patterns which want to repeat themselves and act to hold someone back if not resolved (which can be done with therapy and in other ways) -- and people who are beset by unresolved childhood traumas, having depression, anxiety, self-sabotaging behavior, etc., are likely to come away from this book feeling blamed and misunderstood. If my memory serves, George has with this novel changed gears from her previous empathic and understanding approaches to how trauma works and informs violence in her earlier novels to a less-empathic, boot straps viewpoint. How did she get there, I wonder?

This book is long and detailed, and I wondered if George was writing for the movies.

I find myself being drawn to mystery writers who teach me something I didn't know, like Jeffrey Deaver, who gives me an easy, in-depth class in some interesting subject each time, like hostage negotiation in one of his books or computer hacking, and who give me a story in which a protagonist surmounts some exceedingly awful stuff handed to her/him. It isn't enough to just go deeply into 'place', which George did with her extensive research into the Guernsey Channel island; one wants to get a new perspective on life, society, human psychology -- or something.

The main protagonists and the final choice of murderer (who shall remain nameless here, of course), are not well fleshed-out. The murderer is a cardboard character, whose motives are flimsy (although one can certainly see the reason for anger there), and one senses George didn't want to get too close to that person. There is a character whose personality is unrelievedly and unaccountably bitchy, the ex-wife of the murdered man, who took over the story energetically, actually bullying the reader, I think, and dwarfed the more subtle characters -- I thought some modulation would have been in order, even if the point was to get someone to stand up to her. There are two sub-stories in which people learn to stand up to dominating bullies, which was nice -- but rather a bit underdone, maybe -- I wanted more here.

There has always been something precious about the characters, St. James and his wife, and even Lynley, whom we hear from by telephone a few times in this book. The best, most fleshed-out, real character, by far, in George's work is Barbara Havers, and alas, we don't meet her here, and haven't for several years. I hope we can meet her again in a future book (and that if we get her in another movie, that it is cast with the proper Barbara Havers!).

In general, this book, nice and long, and the above said, intelligently intricate, took up some slack of my time, but left me unnourished, spiritually and intellectually, but, worse, curiously having gone backward in some way.