Publication Date September 23, 2025
Every few years, we get a new novel from Elizabeth George, and I am thrilled when I am lucky enough to receive an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. In 2022, we got Something to Hide with its (for me, at least) mind-blowing look at FGM (female genital mutilation. And this year I was super excited to get a copy of A Slowly Dying Cause from Penguin GroupViking and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. I had no idea what it was about, only that I was being reunited with Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers — good enough for me!
I have been reading the Lynley-Havers novels since the mid-1990s when introduced to them by a fellow librarian when we were stuck in an airport., and my husband knows when I get a new one that I will be pretty much incommunicado for a couple of days. If you aren’t already a fan, it may help to know that while there is significant variety in the plotting of the Lynley-Havers books, they generally include a central mystery, a significant amount of character development, and a focus on a particular topic. In this book, the murder mystery at the heart of the story combines with the ongoing family and relationship issues for both Barbara and Thomas.
The story is set in Cornwall, where the family of the murder victim Michael Lobb has been mining for many generations.Told from multiple points of view, alternate chapters are from Michael Lobb’s diary or journal provide clues and reveal the backstory as well as providing a look at the events leading up to Michael’s murder. At the time of his death, Michael was in his 40s and had lived on family land his entire life. He had been married to his first wife for 20+ years when he took her on an anniversary cruise where he met and became obsessed with a beautiful 18-year-old named Kayla. She so captivated him that he dumped his wife and immediately married her, bringing her home to the family land and business.
Michael’s family business consists of mining tin and pewter, then doing whatever is done with it in the family workshop, where Michael was found dead. The majority owner of the family business, up to his death Michael had been the main roadblock preventing a sale of the business to Cornwall EcoMining, a corporation eager to drill for brine to extract lithium. Sort of the modern version of mining, but very controversial for a variety of reasons (including family relationships and ecological concerns). Kayla, the recent widow, inherited the majority ownership and may or may not yearn to return to her family in South Africa, but in any case there is enough suspicion to prompt Inspector Beatrice Hannaford to welcome help from Lynley and Havers in solving the crime. An employee of the mining company confessed to the crime, but his sister Daidre (Thomas Lynley’s former girlfriend) asks her friend Barbara Havers, visiting in Cornwall while on leave following her mother’s death, to help. Subsequently, Barbara’s partner Sir Thomas Lynley joins the effort. This book is somewhat unique in that the Lynley-Havers role in the investigation doesn’t really get rolling until halfway through…but I’m happy to have them whenever they show up!
The partnership between the aristocratic Lynley and working-class Havers is always fascinating in its excellent weaving of class and wealth distinctions with the tangled family and romantic relationships that complicate any investigation. I also love the way George’s books frequently prompt me to research topics about which I know little (if anything), such as tin and pewter mining, lithium extraction, and genital mutilation. I also keep a dictionary nearby, for quick answers to my puzzled responses to usage of words such as apposite, cassiterite, secateurs, demilune, borstal, ashlar, quoins, trug, and portcullis.
Social commentary finds its way in as well, as in “Someone had wanted him dead, and only in weapon-mad America did people seem to kill one another willy-nilly and without apparent reason.” And as usual, Barbara’s comments are often pure gold: “How often, Barbara asked herself, do we come across a truth that we bloody well never want to face.”
Admittedly, I tend to prejudge this author’s books, but I try to be fair and criticize where it seems to fit. While the revelations by Michael’s diary entries definitely move the plot along, they might have been fewer or had some editing for length. On the other hand, I’m clueless about what might have been left out! I love the series, love the way I can escape into the stories and temporarily forget about the end of democracy, and recommend the series wholeheartedly. 22nd in the series, but can be read and enjoyed as a standalone. Five stars.