Booklist Reviews
"Abso-bloody-lutely" good! That would be DS Barbara Havers' verdict on this one. The metaphor-mixing detective alternates between red high-tops and leopard-print trainers as she continues to subsist on junk-food fixes from her spacious purse. DI Thomas Lynley, meanwhile, continues in his quest to fill the void left by his wife's death. Havers and Linley are working a case involving a vexing problem within London's Nigerian community: despite having been made illegal in England, the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) persists. When a female detective on a special FGM task force is murdered, Havers and Lynley investigate, along with DS Winston Nkata. This is the twenty-first entry in the series, following The Punishment She Deserves (2018), and it offers another artful entanglement of multidimensional characters. Alice Nkata, Winston's mother, stands out among the cast and provides a sharp contrast to the rest, most of whom are dysfunctional, each in his or her own way. The ending may not quite surprise the reader, but it is startling even so. A sad conclusion to an unsettling and thoroughly involving narrative. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.
Kirkus Reviews
George delivers a fresh installment in her Lynley/Havers procedural series, this one more politically charged than most. "Dominique's white and she thinks white, which is to say most of the time she doesn't think at all because she doesn't have to think. She never thought we might be better off if we hired someone without marshmallow skin, no offence." So says an embittered mixed-race filmmaker who's been paired, much to her disgust, with a White photographer to document life in the Black African and Black British neighborhoods of London. There's a hidden undercurrent to the story, which speaks to George's title: Especially among the Nigerian community, female genital mutilation is widely practiced in order to transform young girls "into vessels of chastity and purity for men." A young Nigerian Briton named Tanimola Bankole is being packed off by his bigamous, bullying father to marry such a "suitable" bride in the homeland; other characters have undergone or are slated to undergo the procedure, carried out in illegal butcher shops in the mews and back alleys of Peckham, Lewisham, and thereabouts. DS Havers is on the case, following the trail of victims with the help of a White reconstructive surgeon and advocate. So is DCS Lynley, flummoxed by the fact that one of his detectives has been murdered after she set to work on the FGM beat—and that a senior officer in the Metropolitan Police seems somehow to be involved in her killing. George's story is too long by a couple of hundred pages, with strands that go pretty much nowhere (that of the photographer being one). Still, for all the cultural sensitivities involved in the premise, she handles the details thoughtfully. Was it a basement butcher who killed the inspector? A senior officer? A disgruntled sibling? Mystery buffs will be pleased that, having followed a winding path strewn with red herrings, they won't be likely to guess at the murderer's identity until the very last pages. A skillfully spun yarn of murder and mayhem, if one that sometimes plods. Copyright Kirkus 2021 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Reviews
An autopsy unexpectedly reveals that a police detective was murdered, and the case she was working on—involving North London's Nigerian community—is turned over to Acting Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton. Along with D.S. Winston Nkata and white working-class D.S. Barbara Havers, he encounters a community with which he is largely unfamiliar, whose members seem to cooperate yet have painful secrets to hide.
Copyright 2021 Library Journal.Library Journal Reviews
The 21st Inspector Lynley novel (after
Publishers Weekly Reviews
In bestseller George's superlative 21st novel featuring Acting Det. Chief Supt. Thomas Lynley (after 2018's