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With No One as Witness takes us only weeks
after the resolution of the mystery of A Place of Hiding. A
serial killer has been killing teenaged boys, most black or mixed
race. Unfortunately, the police have been unable to identify the
murders as committed by the same hand, and now, Assistant
Commissioner Hillier (who took the head of the service after Malcolm
Webberly was left seriously injured after being ran over by a car)
fears accusations of racism and neglect. Therefore, to prevent them,
he promotes Nkata sergeant and parades him in front of TV cameras.
Constable Barbara Havers, who is striving to regain her former
position of sergeant, is frustrated by the situation, and even Nkata
takes his promotion with a grain of salt, because he knows it has
nothing to do with his human or professional qualities...
But before the usual team has time to sort
anything out, the killer strikes again. Apparently, he is taunting
them and his compulsion to kill is stronger than ever. Hillier
imposes a profiler on the case, which is only a first step in
provoking Lynley's anger and frustration... Meanwhile, Barbara, who
makes her situation worse by not being a team player, disobeys
orders when her intuition leads her to Colossus, an organization set
to help young people in trouble and keep them off the streets...
With No One As Witness is quite
different from other Elizabeth George's novels. If anything, it
reminded me a bit of In the Presence of the Enemy, in the
sense that in both George departed from the Britishness of her usual
novels, making it an American-style thriller, even though it takes
place in London. I think it is a shame
that she departed once more from what she does best. I missed the
coziness of other novels, and if she had to tackle something
different, I should have wished she did it better. For instance,
when the police have some suspects on a side, and one witness on the
other, how can they not think about showing photographs of the
suspects to the witness? This one plot flaw really bothered me...
Also, after reading such authors as Patricia Cornwell, I kept
wondering why the investigation was not more heavy on forensics. Of
course there is always Simon St-James helping, but couldn't he be
more helpful? One wondered why there were not some car or clothes
fibers or more telling things on at least one of the scenes of
crime. Here the forensics almost seemed anecdotic, and did not much
to make things move forward... I am not expecting forensic novels
from George, but I wish she would stop ambitioning large-scope
novels and come back to the odd body found in the moors or in a
cottage.
Then there is the matter of the "big shocker",
which I will try not to spoil for the reader (but if you really want
it to be a surprise, don't read on). There is, indeed, a major loss
in With No One As Witness, amongst the characters we have now
known and loved (or not!) for long and there is enough foreboding to
alert the reader before this actually happens. After reading reviews
on amazon.com, I could see that many readers were devastated. It
always amuses me to see the reactions of readers when a writer kills
off one of his main characters. It is almost as if the author has a
moral responsibility about his characters, considering some people's
reactions (this always makes me think of Stephen King's Mysery,
and how insightful this novel is!), as if the writer didn't have the
right to do whatever she wanted with characters she gave life to! Beside the amusement, I am not one to
judge (as long as George doesn't touch a hair on Barb's head, that
is!!!), and I can see what George was trying to do, and this is
something about the wheel of fortune turning, and I am quite curious
to see how this will affect the dynamics between the characters.
Well, as a conclusion, I am not sure I like
the turn things are taking, not for the main characters, but for the
sake of the mysteries themselves. For me, George is a writer of
mysteries, not cozies, but mysteries with a cozy side nonetheless.
There are good thriller writers out there, and I am not sure George
is cut out to be one of those. I wish she would not feel obliged to
raise the stakes each time. She is a gifted writer who can show
every nuance of human psyche. So, please, let's stop the races in
the streets of London or the misuse of Lynley's Bentley, and let's
go back to solid mystery novels such as Playing for the Ashes
or A Traitor to Memory and let's keep Lynley's ties
unwrinkled from now on!
Rating: 
© Discussing Books, 04/11/2006
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