Oh my. I'm still catching my breath. I think I stopped breathing about 7 times in the days it took me to finish 'Well-schooled in Murder'. That's about how often I thought the killer was going to be unmasked, only to discover, along with Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers of New Scotland Yard CID, that we all were wrong again. Oh, the crimes and criminals and secrets were being exposed as fast and furious as a hail storm - but not the murderer of a 13-year-old student, Matthew Whately, attending Bredgar Chambers, a financially tottering and doddering independent English school teaching 'B' list aristocrat children, mostly boys from 13 to 18.

The school had been established several centuries ago. The customs and mores being instilled and enforced onto the students grew out of the Middle Ages, particularly those of maintaining upper-class solidarity against the unwashed masses. Poor Matt, in every sense of the word, was a scholarship student, his father being a stonemason and his mother a barmaid, which the school reluctantly has begun to accept. However, the student body is still quite white and aristocrat in accent and studies. Matt and a few of the other lower-class boys definitely were not having an easy time of it. Matt also did not accept the unwritten codes, foremost being loyal to your mates first, then the school. He believed in living in a moral and just universe for all, and helping the innocent and bullied.

Can't you already guess in a school for adolescent boys being dragged into the 20th century (the novel was printed in 1990) that little decent intelligent artistic Matt is not going to see his graduation? However, this is an entitled community of blackguards and repressed sexuality, long used to presenting a surface conformity and centuries-old, publicly enforced strict rules and rituals, while indulging in wild drunken or obscenely punitive parties behind closed doors and in dark hallways, with nothing ever ever to be exposed outside of the group.

Lynley finds himself more than understanding the school rituals and secret codes, having gone to school at Eton. He gets drawn into the atmosphere easily, and if it wasn't for Havers reminding him there is a murderer and possible pedophile, either student or teacher, loose and dangerous, it would be difficult for Lynley to remember aristocratic traditions do not necessarily create good people.

When Lynley and Havers can keep their attention focused on the case, they slowly crack through the walls teachers and students have built around crimes, large and small, too numerous to mention. The school is a hothouse of terrible secrets and failures of duty, mostly from repressed emotional distresses and disturbing relationships.

Unfortunately for both detectives, their relatives and friends are imploding and as a result, a distraction. Lynley's relationship with Helen is a non-starter, which has Lynley broken-hearted and feeling jilted, while Helen has run away to Europe on an extended vacation.

Spoiler

She was going to marry another gentleman in the previous book in the series, and had been traumatized instead by horrible events.

So Lynley is mourning the loss of her presence. Haver's demented mother is losing ground understanding her surroundings, while her father is finding his health deteriorating very fast. Havers finds the struggle hiding her parents from her fellow cops while the two need her more and more because of their disabilities overwhelming. She already has imposed on herself a mountain of emotional stress from trying to earn promotions in a profession where women rarely are more than secretaries and her employer the Yard being riddled with class prejudice against her because of her accent alone, much less her sex.

If all of that wasn't enough in ratcheting up excitement in this thrilling mystery, the author catches us up with the seemingly doomed relationship of Lynley's best friend, handicapped forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James and Lynley's former lover, Deborah, now married to St. James.

Spoiler

Deborah has had another miscarriage, her fourth, since their marriage. She thinks it's because of an abortion she had 7 years ago (OMG, it was Lynley's! He doesn't know!). So Deborah is incredibly mopey and depressed. Simon has noticed. But he thinks Deborah has fallen out of love with him and that she wants to hook up with Lynley again.

Simon is WAY older than her, and he can't get it up - his leg, I mean (got you, didn't I?). Simon's leg is messed up because Lynley drove drunk and smashed up his car and Simon's leg.

OMG!!!!!!!!

There be torture of tots, murders of minors, fearsome funerals and bad teachers. Excessive emoting, grueling gruesomeness and dramatic despair fill these pages, but despite the doom and drama, I could not put the book down! Not only was this a thrill ride and exciting, but it is intricate and tricky, with suspects and clues revolving as confusedly about as an automated stage set of scenery.

This is a 'fun' series to read, people! Don't judge me.......

Where I grew up, the State of Washington, the first European settlement was established in 1833 in mud, rain, forests, rivers, lakes, mountains and wildlife. Washington state voted to become part of the United States in 1889. Its first non-Indian settlers were prostitutes, mail-order wives, farmers, fishermen, fur trappers, loggers, miners, missionaries and hermits.

The small town of Seattle was established in 1853. (I was born there about a hundred years later!) Seattle now is a medium-sized city. Territorial University, now the University of Washington, was opened in 1861. (I was in the third grade 100 years later!) The single available class originally was for elementary students and the teachers were missionaries. The first real school building only for young Seattle kids opened in 1870 (I was a junior in high school 100 years later!) It had two classrooms, not counting the attic, which opened later.

I started kindergarten in 1958, 88 years after the very first school in Seattle had opened. EIGHTY-EIGHT years! Compare that with the history of the establishment of schools in England, and their traditional pomp, glory and ceremonies stretching back centuries! Centuries!!!

To say that when books describe the ancient schools, and everything else, of Europe boggles my mind is an understatement. (The utterly foreign sense of millennia of traditions in Europe in general fascinates me.) 'Well-schooled Murder' isn't the first book about all of the strong 'secret club' emotional mysticism that seems to surround certain hoary institutions, but it definitely gives a good feel of it. In my opinion, it seems to me the author is saying that at least some of the schools need modernization, and a good cleaning, literally. As a female, I couldn't agree more on both ideas.

I remember, as a child, Seattle seemed to consist of a lot of taverns and square tall cement and dirt-encrusted brick 2- and 6-story buildings with rotting wooden and brick ones mixed in, and grassy empty lots, brick and wood churches and a new spotless 6-lane freeway that had maybe ten cars using it on Sundays, with double that on weekdays. In my teen years, Seattle got its first skyscrapers of shiny glass and mirrored materials (some of which caused many many car wrecks on the now bumper-to-bumper traffic on the previous 6-car lane converted into narrow 8-lane freeway).

In my lifetime, change has been swift and constant. Nothing of my old neighborhood exists, since all of the buildings and even the streets have been redone. So the stories about the European Old World that authors write about in books have a fascination for me which lingers long after I put the book down. I realize that Europe mostly been rebuilt as well (hello, two major world wars, plus countless other little and medium wars) - still, when it has preserved old buildings and city centers, America can't compete. Our first recorded settlement was in 1565, depending on context. To say these settlements consisted of mostly mud and three buildings is more accurate. A civilized grandeur has never really been present in my country, IMHO. However, we certainly have accomplished other forms of grandiosity! ; )

http://geography.about.com/od/unitedstatesofamerica/a/oldest-cities-united-states.htm

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763911.html