The suicide of William Goldacre is devastating to those left behind. But what was the cause of his tragedy and how far might the consequences reach? Is there a link between the young man’s leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge?

Following various career-threatening misdemeanours, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers is desperate to redeem herself. So when a past encounter with bestselling feminist writer Clare Abbott and her pushy personal assistant Caroline Goldacre gives her a connection to the Cambridge murder, Barbara begs DI Thomas Lynley to let her pursue the crime.

Full of shocks, intensity and suspense from first page to last, A Banquet of Consequences reveals both Lynley and Havers under pressure, and author Elizabeth George writing at the very height of her exceptional powers.

Review: I have read and liked many books of the Inspector Lynley series. It’s been now a few years without me reading anything written by Elizabeth George. So I don’t know if my tastes have changed or if A banquet of consequences is not one of her better novels. But let me explain.

As always the beginning is rather slow, but it is not boring. You just get to know the characters. Characters, who are all in unhealthy relationships, it seemed, so I was wondering the whole time: Who’s gonna die?!

Sadly it soon stopped being thrilling to me and started being boring. The book felt artificially prolonged. The whole Charlie-India-Nat-story or the Rory-Fiona-Memories for example? I could have done without it being so detailed. (Amazon tells me this novel has 592 pages… it felt like 1500…)

I did like the feministic touch of this book and Carolin was a very interesting, emotions provoking character.

If I think back, I remember Elizabeth George’s novels being long, but I never felt bored reading them. Maybe my tastes changed, maybe it was because of the rather small role Lynley and Havers have in this story?