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What Came Before He Shot Her

Sue Green

What Came Before He Shot Her

by Elizabeth George

Hodder & Stoughton, HK$150

The most recent - and perhaps final - of Elizabeth George's best-selling Inspector Lynley series ended dramatically with the gunning down of Lynley's pregnant wife, Helen, on their Belgravia doorstep, and with her death and that of their unborn child when he ordered her life support to be turned off.

At first it seemed that the murder of With No-One as Witness was related to his investigations. But then a 12-year-old mixed-race boy, Joel Campbell, was arrested for the seemingly motiveless killing. This, in the wake of the death of his wife and his hope, prompted Lynley to quit the force.

In writing With No-One as Witness George originally included Joel's back story. But at the urging of her British editor she unpicked it from the fabric of that novel to create a stand-alone. What Came Before He Shot Her is the not entirely successful result.

Billed by her publishers as a complex urban thriller, it's not so much that as a fictional examination of a dysfunctional family, set in the context of the criminal underbelly of London housing estates.

This unrelentingly bleak tale is a departure for George, who has made her name writing long and involving detective stories. She has applied her not-inconsiderable research talents to the dark side of big city life. And it's all here: the cycle of poverty, violence, drugs, unemployment, under-education, racial tensions, abandoned children, unwanted pregnancies, truancy, families that can't cope, teenage sex, gangs and, of course, crime.

George's grim findings embellish every page of this story of Joel and his two siblings, Ness, 15, and Toby, seven, dumped on their Aunt Kendra's doorstep by their grandmother as she leaves for Jamaica. Their father is dead, their mother in a psychiatric institution and Kendra, a charity-shop worker and trainee masseuse struggling to make something of her life, is ill-equipped to deal with the children and their emotional baggage.

What Came Before He Shot Her details Kendra's efforts to provide the three with a home in her tiny house on the edge of a huge, drug-infested council estate in North Kensington. But it's no surprise that the odds are heavily stacked against her and the two, white do-gooders (one a social worker) who try to ensure that the children don't fall prey to the local gangs.

To sustain interest when the ending is known is no mean literary feat, but George doesn't quite pull it off. Not that What Came Before He Shot Her is bad. But it is, quite simply, boring. This tale of fear and hopelessness draws attention to the grim reality of life for many Londoners. But the social comment is laid on with a trowel, and any gains made by the Campbells are followed by setbacks as the storyline takes an inevitable trajectory.

Even the occasional revelation that goes part-way to explaining Kendra's situation and aspects of the children's behaviour - what happened to their father, how their mother came to be institutionalised, for instance - is no great shock. Nor are the reasons Joel was in Belgravia that fateful day.

When Joel finally gets that gun in his hand it comes as something of a relief. The great pity will be if the fatal bullet has killed off a successful and much-loved series along with the inspector's wife.

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