A Place of Hiding | Elizabeth George

A Place of Hiding | Elizabeth George | three and a half, the half is for colorful characters!

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A Place of Hiding

	A Place of Hiding Elizabeth George Bantam, 2003 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 113 reviews view larger image
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An isolated beach on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel is the scene of the murder of Guy Brouard, one of Guernsey?s wealthiest inhabitants and its main benefactor. Forced as a child to flee the Nazis in Paris, Brouard was engaged in his latest project when he died: a museum in honor of those who resisted the German occupation of the island during World War II.

It is from this period of time that his murderer may well have come. But there are others on Guernsey with reason to want Guy Brouard dead: his wives, his business associates, his current mistress, the underprivileged teenagers he mentored?any of whom might have harbored a secret motive for murder. As family and friends gather for the reading of the will, Deborah and Simon St. James find that seemingly everyone on the history-haunted island has something to hide. And behind all the lies and alibis, a killer is lurking. In order to bring this person to justice, the St. James must delve into Guernsey?s dark history?both past and present?and into the troubled psyche of someone who may have exacted retribution for the most unspeakable crime of all.

In A Place of Hiding, bestselling novelist Elizabeth George marks new territory in the darker landscapes of human relationships. She tells a gripping, suspenseful story of betrayal and devotion, war and remembrance, love and loss...and the higher truths to which we must all ultimately answer.

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Hidden Perfection

Absolutely fascinating character studies within an intricately woven plot in a mysterious locale makes this a great page-turning read! Just as the island itself is reluctant to give up its WWII secrets, so are the characters -- multi-layered facets and motives are hidden within each and from each other. Another brilliantly executed work from Ms. George!

three and a half, the half is for colorful characters!

When Cherokee River offers his sister China the trip to Europe acting as courier service, she hesitates, but finally accepts the offer. She is trying to recover from the breakup with her boyfriend, from the relationship in which she was miserable, and, besides, she has always wanted to travel out of California. So, they go to the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, where English and French traditions collide producing a unique mixed society...

And soon Cherokee knocks on the door of Deborah and Simon St. James in London. China is accused of murder and Cherokee does not know what to do. Deborah, who is an old friend of China's, decides to help and all three go back to Guernsey.
The victim is Guy Brouard, a rich philanthropist, benefactor of many people from the island, who left behind a puzzling will, whose terms are a surprise even to his sister Ruth, who used to know the terms of each of his often changing wills. Guy is the one who summoned China and Cherokee to bring him the architectural plans for the museum of WWII, which he planned to build on Guernsey.

As the story unravels, Guy does not seem anymore to be a flawless man, and many people may have had a motive to kill him. A lot of secrets are being revealed and everyone has something to hide. Guernsey is really a place of hiding for many... The characters involved are as various as they can be: Paul, a shy boy from a poor family, bullied by his older brother; Adrian, Guy's son, completely overwhelmed by his possessive mother Margaret; Frank, who tries to hide his father's painful secret; Guy's latest lover and her children; talented glass worker Henry Moullin and his daughter Cynthia...

This book is best in its middle - the beginning is very long and several times I felt like putting it down. Later, the feeling subsided as I became engrossed in the plot and the characters' descriptions. Unfortunately, the ending is convoluted and too blurred to make this book a good mystery novel. I finished it, but only for the sake of it. Warning for the fans of Lynley books: the only mention of Tommy Lynley is as Deborah's former lover and he appears briefly in a quick consultation, when Deborah and Cherokee visit him at Scotland Yard.

I rate "A Place of Hiding" three and a half stars and hope that it really is one of the worse novels by Elizabeth George - I will give her books another try though.

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Finally, it's over

I just finished working my way through the entire Lynley series, up to the latest, over the course of about a year, with other books interspersed. My opinion was formed after about three books, and each of the others simply provided more support. Elizabeth George is like that wonderful aunt who makes wonderful cookies but brings them over, in bushels, every day, every week, two bushels on holidays. Halfway through each book, I'm muttering through tight lips, "Will you PLEASE just get on with it?"

The last five or six 800-page novels cover a single chronological year. One actually begins before the previous ends! That in itself should give you pause. One of the novels is 1002 pages long, and that is, blast it, TOO MANY COOKIES!

With that off my chest, yes, George is one of the best going, once you learn to read at a glancing jog. Her characters are human and well-drawn. In A Place of Hiding, it's true we care less and less about the victim as the story progresses, but it is also true that the who of the murder is a complete surprise and yet painfully satisfying, folding us back to the first few, probably forgotten pages of the story. As she often does, George layers effective complexity on her characters. One of the most sympathetic commits a murder far less shocking than it probably should be; one of the least sympathetic has a moment when we are touched, if only briefly, with a sense of the tragedy that turned him from a merely unexceptional person to someone we loathe.

But the endless whinging over Deb and Simon, Helen and Lynley, Tommie and Deborah, even, in one book, Helen and Simon, is unendurable. I am fed up with their laocaonic (whatever) wrestling with their marriages. I am fed up with Deb's "What did you say?" chips on shoulders regarding her husband's scarcely discernible sexism and his endless "My love, what I meant was" responses. Tommie's doubts bore me and Helen is less cute than anyone realizes. I know more about Tommie than I ever would have wanted to, and once I got to know Helen after reading With No One as Witness, I did not find her fate especially hard to bear. It's like having nice neighbors who insist on discussing their marriage with you.

What a maddening writer. Her books are wonderful, page for page, plot for plot. But there is not a page on one of them that I won't wager I could cut by 20% without anyone noticing. If I'm wrong, I'll... eat a cookie.

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Will be enjoyed by fans of the series

It had been a while since I had read an Elizabeth George book, but picked right up again with her distinctive writing style. This book focused on Simon St. James, the crippled forensic scientist, and his much-young wife Deborah, as they investigated the murder of an elderly Jewish mogul on the island of Guernsey.

I had no idea of the unique history of the island of Guernsey and that it was occupied by the Nazis during World War II. George did a great job of incorporating this history organically into the story. The mystery was complex and engrossing, and the characters endearing and compelling. This book is a real page-turner!

On the down side, the hyperemotionalism of George's characters had left me weary in the past, and did again with this outing. Aren't these people supposed to be British? The solution to the murder was contrived, and the climax relied on the "talking killer" device to reveal all.

All in all, this novel will be enjoyed by fans of the series but won't win George any new fans.

Reviewer: Liz Clare, co-author of "To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark"

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A Place of Hiding

Elizabeth George is a prolific and very popular author. I'd recently read With No One As A Witness and found it very well written. Then I tried to read What Came Before He Shot Her and I couldn't get into it. A Place of Hiding is somewhere in the middle of these two books. Deborah and Simon St. James are summoned to Guernsey in the Channel Islands to act as detectives because Deborah's friend, China, has been arrested for the murder of a philandering philantrophist named Guy Brouard. She and her brother, Cheyenne, were hired as couriers to deliver a package from California to Guy Brouard. The book seems to go on too long with two many sub-plots. The setting in Guernsey in the Channel Islands did add interest, but overall this is not one of her best.

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