A Great Deliverance

A Great Deliverance – Elizabeth George

In a quiet village in the Yorkshire Dales, a farmer named William Teys is found in his barn, decapitated. Beside his body sits his daughter, Roberta, a heavy, silent young woman, who says only that she did it and that she is not sorry. Then she refuses to speak again and is committed to a psychiatric hospital.

A Great Deliverance, the first novel in Elizabeth George’s acclaimed series featuring Inspector Thomas Lynley, follows the investigation sent from Scotland Yard to discover what really happened. Lynley is a handsome, wealthy and well-educated aristocrat, the Earl of Asherton, who works as a detective. His new partner is Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, a prickly, working-class officer who resents the privileged Lynley and everything he represents, and who has been given one last chance to prove herself.

As the mismatched pair investigate the close-knit village of Keldale, they uncover a web of secrets beneath its peaceful surface. William Teys was known as a devout and respected man, but the more Lynley and Havers learn about his family, including Roberta’s older sister, who disappeared years before, the darker the truth becomes. Meanwhile, the detectives must overcome their own prejudices and personal struggles to work together.

George, an American writer who sets her novels in England, combines a complex mystery with rich characterization and psychological depth, exploring class, family, faith and abuse.

A Great Deliverance is a compelling start to a long-running series and will appeal to fans of literary crime fiction. It contains themes of child sexual abuse and violence that some readers may find disturbing.