A Banquet of Consequences

Lee has a great narrator’s voice and fine acting skills. The listener easily distinguishes between multiple characters, male and female, and is thoroughly engrossed in the fears, frustrations, and family feuds in George’s mystery. Lee deploys an excellent range of British accents for Insp. Thomas Lynley, Eighth Earl of Asherton, and his sidekick, working-class Sgt. Barbara Havers, as well as sundry friends and enemies. But Havers finds herself in deep trouble with Lynley’s boss (and one-time lover) Isabelle Avery, and she faces possible reassignment to the boonies, and even Lynley has difficulty standing up for her as the case unfolds. Who is to blame for William Goldacre’s suicide? Did Caroline, his mad, meddling mother murder her employer, the famous feminist writer Clare Abbott? Who put the poison in the toothpaste tube? Lee leads us comfortably through all the twists and turns of George’s 19th Lynley/Havers saga. A Viking hardcover. (Nov.)