I think ‘A Traitor to Memory’ was an interesting book to read. It dissects a dysfunctional family which rotates around two human suns made important by family dynamics, a son and an obsessive father.

First is the musical prodigy, Gideon Davies, who is a minor sensation in classical music circles, a favored child and now adult whose career everyone in the Davies’ world must support.

The father, Richard Davies, forces the entire family into a supplementary role behind Gideon’s talent in every way. Every capable adult in the house lives there only to support Gideon financially and emotionally in his (actually, mostly his father’s) quest for Gideon to be a violin virtuoso. Raphael Robson, a music instructor, is made to give up his apartment and he moves into the family house in order to instruct the tot when he shows (according to family legend) musical interest. Eugenie Davies must work at two jobs despite being the mother of two children, one being the ‘prodigy’, but the other being a handicapped girl, Sonia, with tremendous medical issues and fragility. An unqualified nanny, eastern Germany refugee Katja Wolff, is given an upstairs room to be available for Sonia’s care. A teacher, Sarah-Jane Beckett, is hired as an in-house governess to tutor Gideon when it becomes apparent going to a school is taking away too much of Gideon’s time from practice. Various lodgers are installed at different times in another available bedroom for their rent money. The crowded house also includes Jack Davies and his wife, grandparents to the prodigy and Richard’s parents. Jack is a damaged war hero, suffering from PTSD. He cannot tolerate anyone with disabilities, particularly Sonia, and he constantly berates Richard for her existence while she lived.

Early in the book, Gideon, now a young adult, is suffering from an emotional crisis. During a concert, he has forgotten how to play music. He walks off the stage after three minutes of humiliation. The family sends him to a psychiatrist, who urges him to begin a journal. As he writes down his thoughts, it becomes clear to him he has trouble remembering parts of his childhood. He realizes that somehow he has completely forgotten he had a sister. He vaguely remembers, eventually, Sonia drowned, and that is why his mother Eugenia left Richard to begin another life without ever contacting him again. Also, inexplicably to himself, he asks an uneducated delivery girl, Libby Neale, who has expressed dissatisfaction with her estranged husband and her living arrangements, to move into a downstairs flat in his house. They have almost nothing in common, but soon Libby is imagining she is needed by Gideon to fulfill him. Gideon is struggling with his career and his family and his memory, so he has reached out to Libby for companionship, but he is in no shape for a girlfriend.

Then, Eugenia is murdered. Constable Barbara Havers and his lordship, Thomas Lynley, are on it, and gentle reader, so are we.

Meanwhile, Detective Superintendent Malcolm Webberly, Havers and Lynley’s boss, and his wife Francis and their daughter Miranda, are having some major issues of their own. Francis has severe agoraphobia. Webberly has moved on with his job and his life, but he loyally comes home to Francis despite her inability to leave the house, which has crippled their marriage as well as her life. Lynley and Havers wonder at Webberly’s intense interest in Eugenia’s murder - until Lynley discovers love letters from Webberly in Eugenia’s dresser.

This is a MASSIVE murder mystery, heavy with character analysis as much as with red herrings. However, I floundered about, a bit disconcerted, when the book’s construction was revealed to be on two timelines which did not coincide. The timeline difference was not made conceptionally clear that that is what is happening until very late in the book when one of the timelines was discussing identifiable events which had occurred a LOT earlier. It seemed like a very rough welding of story progression. I also found the essential plot events too disparate and separated without linkage for too long. If you put this story off too long between readings, it would have been hard to keep up. All in all, I was unhappy with the book’s architecture.

I read other reviews, and as usual, some were discomfited by the changing points of view. Usually, I have no sympathy or understanding with this complaint, and it isn’t the first time I have seen people upset with this, to me, normal process available to an author in writing a book. However, in this particular story, since the soldering of scenes was poor, IMHO, the changing viewpoints added to my confusion occasionally.

The development of motivation and the impact of childhood, education, and family on character viewpoint was of the usual high-quality perspicacity I expect from this author. George explored each character from behind their eyes, and I loved it. This has always been my favorite aspect of George’s books, so while I’m a bit unhappy about how the book was put together, the tone-perfect explorations of character keep me a fan.

Usually I enjoy this series a lot, but this one was not the best by a long shot. The backstory for every incidental character can be enjoyable but this book didn't need any padding as it was already very long.

Worst was the ending - I felt like the final act of the book was unnecessary, and (maybe an even worse crime) kind of clumsy. Not George's usual smooth writing. The character who did it was the worst drawn character in the entire book (Libby) and what happened seemed unrealistic or at least not really believable. And the extra bit of pathos it added in sort of pushed me to eye rolling, rather than the dramatic irony/tragedy intended.

I'm reading this series in order and I do hope that they will not get more lengthy as I go. This one had a complicated plot but it seemed way too long. I'm still enjoying the main players in the series. My issue with this book and the one preceding it is that the author spends pages and pages telling us about characters and their history and then they get dropped along the way. At the end I find myself thinking "but what happened with .........?" And to me the detailed descriptions of what roads the characters are driving on to get to their destination are unnecessary and just make the book longer without really adding anything.

2.5, I guess. This was officially my least favorite so far of the Lynley books. Neither Lynley or Havers is in it much at all, the focus is mostly on one character and it seems as though he narrates 3/4's of the very long book. Which is fine, I guess if he had been more interesting, but every time I would turn the page and see GIDEON at at the top of it I would sigh and see how many pages I would have to plow through before I was rid of him again. Those sections could have and should have been severely edited down. Also, there is priceless violin abuse, which is second only to animal cruelty when it comes to things I don't like to read.

The one I was missing, in which Helen is early pregnant. Three hit and run accidents, a little girl with Down''s drowned 20 years ago, a violin child prodigy who lost ability to play.

This was an unexpected installment in one of my favorite mystery series. It is quite different from the first 10 in that we get very little story centered around the protagonists Lynley and Havers. Instead, the reader is wrapped up in the lives Gideon Davies and his family and friends. There are 2 timelines in the novel as well, although this isn't apparent until close to the end (hence the spoiler tag, although I don't know how much it would have changed my reading of the novel).

The novel has all of the wonderful things I love about George: descriptive and emotional writing that makes me feel as if I'm right there with the characters, a suspense that starts off strong and still continues to grow until the denouement, and a story that is believable. Still, I did miss catching up on Lynley and Havers themselves, and I also think this book was too long. Maybe that's because much of it is about the Davies family.

I really liked these murder mysteries. I am very particular about the kind of mysteries I will read- nothing too dark, gruesome, gory, etc. And these were particularly well written. The characters had substance and evolved throughout each book. But I finally had to stop reading this series because some of the books just had too much sex.

It was supremely long winded and if I wasn't invested in this series by now in probably wouldn't have finished it. Anyhow. Finally got through it thank goodness.

OK, so this book and #10 "In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner" are not my favorites in the series. Maybe it's the relentless sordidness of both stories. And maybe I held out a little better in #10 because there was a lot of focus on Inspector Lynley, due to his acquaintance with the father, and on Havers, due to her efforts to mend fences with the Inspector.
#11 has a nice bit with DS (or is he a DC still?) Nkata, which I appreciated, but you spend an awful lot of time inside Gideon Davies' head, dealing with his messed-up family. I guess I wanted to see more of our heroes.