Payment in Blood by Elizabeth George. !! Oh my god. So. My mother started reading Elizabeth George [some years ago], loved them, and started buying them for me.
And I... do not like them. I read the first two, started the third and just... couldn't carry on.
I have tried to formulate why many times over the years. It's not the class thing as such (although Havers' life is so freaking miserable and Lynley's is so ~delightful~), but what I think of as Elizabeth George's clinical viewpoint? I don't know how else to express it. Like she is watching all her characters like they are bugs (or butterflies or whatever) stuck on a board with a pin, and they are very well rendered, but there is no love for them? I think in the 2nd book the murder victim is a young boy? Like 12 maybe? Poor kid at a boarding school murdered by his classmates (!) and that should be horrifying. We should feel something, and I never really did. 3rd book (it's all coming back to me!) a girl is kidnapped and her politician mum is more concerned about the press than about the child. And I remember thinking: This kid's not gonna make it, and I can't read another book about a dead child with that weird, clinical distance applied to everything.
The obvious point of comparison is Peter Wimsey, where the characters are not just well written but it feels like the author cares about them.
I hope this makes sense. I've never been able to discuss this with anyone because I have never come across anyone else who has read the books - except my mother who (as said before) adores them. So I can't really tell her...
no subject
!! Oh my god. So. My mother started reading Elizabeth George [some years ago], loved them, and started buying them for me.
And I... do not like them. I read the first two, started the third and just... couldn't carry on.
I have tried to formulate why many times over the years. It's not the class thing as such (although Havers' life is so freaking miserable and Lynley's is so ~delightful~), but what I think of as Elizabeth George's clinical viewpoint? I don't know how else to express it. Like she is watching all her characters like they are bugs (or butterflies or whatever) stuck on a board with a pin, and they are very well rendered, but there is no love for them? I think in the 2nd book the murder victim is a young boy? Like 12 maybe? Poor kid at a boarding school murdered by his classmates (!) and that should be horrifying. We should feel something, and I never really did. 3rd book (it's all coming back to me!) a girl is kidnapped and her politician mum is more concerned about the press than about the child. And I remember thinking: This kid's not gonna make it, and I can't read another book about a dead child with that weird, clinical distance applied to everything.
The obvious point of comparison is Peter Wimsey, where the characters are not just well written but it feels like the author cares about them.
I hope this makes sense. I've never been able to discuss this with anyone because I have never come across anyone else who has read the books - except my mother who (as said before) adores them. So I can't really tell her...