Serendipity

When I headed out to Colorado a couple of weeks ago, I went without a proper mystery novel, which is something I like to have on vacation. Fortunately, I had sussed out that Breckenridge had a used book store and when I went there and was browsing its mystery section, it magically turned out to have exactly the Elizabeth George novel I was looking for, the eighth in her Inspector Lynley series, In the Presence of the Enemy.*

I finished the book yesterday and I must say that it really hit the spot. It is the eighth of her novels I have read since the pandemic's onset, and maybe the best of the lot, or at least since the first one. Early on in the series the soap opera aspect of the main characters' love lives was initially charming, then became annoying. In this one it is present but nicely leavened in there, never oppressive but just enough to remind you of what's going on in the protagonists' broader arcs -- and I do root for them, don't get me wrong. (quasi spoiler alert) There is even an unexpected head fake that integrates with the mystery plot -- I'll say no more than that. Once I hit publish on this post, I'll put the 9th novel in the series on my Amazon list so I'll know to look out for it in upcoming weeks as happen through stores.

* Later in the week, after I had finished McPhee's Basin and Range and discovered that McPhee had a book about going to Alaska, the store repeated the feet of having exactly the book I was looking for, despite not being the greatest used book store ever, and certainly paling beside the one Mary and I discovered in Boulder back in 2019. But perhaps my assessment of the store is not so much a measure of the store as it is a reflection of my changed way of browsing from my youth, when I would happily snap up books by authors I had just barely heard of because they were cheap or "looked interesting," only to bring them home and have them gather dust.