Elizabeth George, Deception on His Mind
Deception on His Mind is the ninth book in the Barbara Havers/Thomas Lynley series. However, it is almost exclusively a Barbara Havers book. No Thomas Lynley, no Simon, Helen or Deborah either, and surprisingly, I didn’t miss the lot. Deception on His Mind focuses on Barbara and completes the more intimate portrayal of the character begun in In the Presence of the Enemy.
Thomas Lynley and Helen Clyde finally tie the knot. Injured in her last investigation, Barbara Havers is supposed to take a vacation. When her little friend and neighbor, eight-year-old Hadiyyah, tells her that she and her daddy, Taymullah Azhar, are rushing to the seaside after a strange phone call received by her father, Barbara is curious. She later hears on the news that the Pakistani community in the coastal town of Balford-le-Nez is in an uproar after the murder of Haytham Querashi, a Pakistani recently arrived in England. Querashi was supposed to marry Sahlah Malik, the daughter of a rich Balford businessman.
Deducing that Azhar and her daughter are heading to Balford, Barbara worries for her little friend and decides to follow them and help in any way she can. Luckily, the DCI in charge of the investigation is Emily Barlow, who was in detective school with her. After recalling herself to her old friend, Barbara will be involved in a complex investigation, complicated by the fact that Muhannad Malik, brother of Sahlah, pressures the police to acknowledge Qerashi’s death as a racist murder.
Among the many suspects we discover characters who have secrets to hide and whose complex personalities unfold progressively. Tensions between English and Pakistani, cultural differences and misunderstandings, the weight of tradition against an evolving occidental society, are illustrated by George’s fine prose. In her last book, In the Presence of the Enemy, the recurring theme was hypocrisy, here it is, as the title points out, deception. Reading Deception on His Mind, the reader progressively discovers deception on everybody’s mind. People keep deceiving others and themselves, including Barbara, who might pay the high price for her own deception…
Deception on His Mind is a very good mystery, the characterization is excellent as usual. I was a little bit disappointed by the ending, I would have liked the final revelation to be more unexpected. On the other hand, I liked to learn more about Barbara, who has gone a long way since the grumpy and prejudiced sergeant we met in A Great Deliverance.
Rating: 4/5
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