This just did not work for me. I resisted picking it up, and put it down as soon as possible (see the five years it took me to finish! I usually like Elizabeth George, but I found all these characters unpleasant and prone to humor their weakest impulses. The police were corrupt and contemptuous of humanity, the suspects were mostly cheats, and even when people pretended they cared about others they'd show it in horrible ways. I did not like spending time with any of them!

Also, the mystery itself was dull and seemed beside the point. This was true for both the current murders and the death of the child a generation ago.

Good God! That ending... Fuck.

4 terrible secrets

A magnificently plotted novel, with fascinating characters and intricately threaded subplots. The focus is off the detectives and on to a big cast of characters related to a crime that occurred twenty years ago. A woman is murdered in a hit-and-run accident. Seemingly unrelated, we read the journal a concert violinist named Gideon, who enters therapy in order to break through a creative block. Long-repressed memories return. The story spins out from these two characters into surprising threads.

I found the book an extraordinary pleasure to read. Though the story line was compelling, I had no interest in racing through the novel. I wanted to read every clue, understand each setting, each alibi, every lie told. At the end, I was saddened by the human nature revealed here, and terribly impressed by the depth and scope of what I had just read.

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.

Twenty-eight-year-old virtuoso violinist Gideon Davies has lost not only his memory of music but also his ability to play the instrument he mastered as a five-year-old prodigy. All he can remember is a single name: Sonia.

Oh man, this book took forever to finish. But the payoff at the end is worth it. But honestly this beast of a book could have been shorter. It really tried to do the most.

In A Traitor To Memory the author opted for two narrative styles. One is the inner thoughts of musician Gideon Davies. He has forgotten the events surrounding the death of his sister Sonia which is linked to his inability to play and a current bout of hit and run accidents. The other style is the straightforward plotting of a police investigation. And it takes patience to handle the discordances between these styles. One gives the psychological look at a bizarre family whilst the other tackles Inspector Lynley and his partners. Linking these two, initially is motherhood with all its complexities. But the ultimate link is facing your past.

For a first book by this well touted English author, it may be considered not the best start. I noted the poor reviews but I’m glad I started here. I know that her plotting will involve very nuanced characters even if I can guess the whodunit aspect off the bat. Elizabeth George made me reconsider how women prisoners deal with life after, especially with violent crimes and how we view outsiders. And that ending made perfect sense.

Definitely not a perfect book but still worth the effort if one is willing to read a slow burn read with commentary on being an outsider and on family relationships.

I couldn't stop reading this one. It actually frustrated me how long it took me to read it

I do enjoy Elizabeth George's prose, and this installment in her Lynley/Havers series had an unusually rich cast of secondary characters, compassionately evoked. The whodunit kept me happily, breathlessly speculating for most of the novel... but I found that its resolution felt incomplete and unsatisfying. Maybe that's just my craving for order and method. Barbara Havers (wearer of slogan t-shirts, consumer of chocolate croissants, relentless pursuer of justice) continues to be delightful, and the more visible Lynley's flaws become, the more compelling I find him as a character.