For all of us fans of Elizabeth George and her beautifully crafted characters, Careless in Red means the long awaited return of our dearly beloved Thomas Linley and his partner, Barbara Havers.
Linley, devastated with grief, has taken himself out to the countryside in a strange walking trip that is supposed to take him through the coast of England, in an attempt to deal with the pain caused by the death of his dear wife. In this trip, however, he will find the body of a young man who has apparently fallen while climbing, and he will soon become part of an investigation he doesn't particularly want to be involved in.
As always in any of George's novels, the readers will find themselves engulfed by a number of secondary characters and suspects that will entangle us up in a net of motives that range from sexual desires to vengeance, making it almost impossible to decide who the killer is. The whole story is constructed around the difficult relationship between parents and their children, which turns out to be one of the central topics throughout the book. The ending, as always with this woman, will be shocking.
Good book, but not the best in the series. Fans of Havers will find her presence somewhat diluted, although her dry sense of humor will make them chuckle or laugh out loud at times. It is a pity that we have to wait for three hundred pages to have her in the scene, however, or that we don't get any insights of the case from her point of view. I hope the next book won't be long in coming, and that Havers has a more important role in it.
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