In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

By Elizabeth George.

This is a murder story that sends the reader on an endless search with the major characters from the Scotland Yard turning every stone in pursuit of the possessed serial killer.

          The story started with the introduction of the motive in the prologue behind the spate of killings witnessed in the novel of over seven hundred pages by a master of the English mystery and the inner workings of the famed murder investigative intelligence of the Scotland Yard. Not only that, the reader is taken on a psychological roller-coaster ride until you start begging for the revelation of the serial killer.

          David King-Ryder is a proud man who have been hiding under the artistic ingenuity of his long time partner late Michael Chandler for successful theatrical performances. Michael Chandler’s death through a careless case of drowning brought the entire romp of David King-Ryder to the merciless scrutiny and criticisms of the frenzied media. The media descended heavily on him after his two hugely expensive productions sank like concrete battleships. He had the unfortunate experience of reading certain acerbic reviews and analyses of his creative decline. Hw was called everything from an “artistic charlatan” to a “vessel buoyed by past glories,” with those glories ostensibly burgeoning from a single source: his late partner Michael Chandler.

          To prove his haters and critics wrong, he went and stole the never-staged work of his late partner titled Hamlet. But there was someone secretly privy to his monumental deceit: his son Mathew from his first marriage. Mathew is his father’s manager but he is grieviously wronged by his father in his will when he willed his money to his immediate wife and the larger part to a cause. It then becomes a payback time. He blackmails his father on telephone and tells him where to drop the manuscript of the Hamlet or he takes him to the media for his nunc dimittus. Unfortunately for David, the manuscript fell into the wrong hand and subsequently people started dying with him taking his own life.

          The gruesome murder of a young man and a girl Nicola in a forest far removed from London attracted the attention of the Scotland Yard when a retired colleague who happens to be the father of the girl Andy Maiden specifically asked for the services of his former colleague Lynley.

          Everybody became instant suspects. Andy Maiden is one, Julian – Nicola’s boyfriend is another and Samantha Julian’s cousin another. Nicola’s former roommate and former boss are the rest. From the streets of London to the forest of Nine Sister’s Henge and the homes of principal suspects in Staffordshire, the investigations went under and fruitless.

          At long last, a demoted detective almost Barbara Havers whose former partner Lynley have taken to be a liability to Scotland Yard stumbled on what led to the killer of Nicola and Cole. He is David King-Ryder’s son Mathew. Before the end of the day, Andy Maiden had equally taken his own life as he came in contact with the humiliation of being suspected to be the killer of his daughter.

          Mathew never gets to use the money he collected through blackmail from his father. 

.        His greed and blood-thirstiness has brought on him a raw deal in a prison definitely from where he might end up taken to the electric chair.

        From the other angle, the secret lifestyles of some of the characters are brought to the fore and they are very nauseating. Nicola Maiden leaves the law school and a law firm in which she works with for new life in offering pleasures to males on the platform of a company that caters to the needs of the morally depraved males which curiously included a world-renowned medical doctor. Strange enough, the doctor’s wife is in the know.