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Missing Joseph (Inspector Linley Mystery Series)

By: Elizabeth George
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
ISBN: 0340831391
ISBN-13: 9780340831397
Released: 08 Dec 2003
RRP: £7.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Disappointing - lacks plot and pace - By: Rachel Irvine, 16 Apr 2008
I have enjoyed many of Elizabeth George's books, & it has surprised me that I 'discovered' her relatively recently. Like other readers I enjoy the classic 30s detective stories, & PD James in the modern era. I have found many of George's books gripping - reallly well-written, with extremely good plot lines & interesting back-drop with the main characters developing their own lives through the novels - rather in the style of Dorothy L Sayers. Having just read 'Missing Josepth', I now know why it took me so long to find her. I read this book a long time ago, & it put me off her writing for ages. In fairness, the book is well-written, & the plot development of the relationship between Deborah & Simon St John is good, but the actual crime story is turgid - extremely slow-paced & with none of the twists & layers of other work. The whole lot seems shrouded in the Lancastrian mist! I would recommend others before attempting this one.
Love, Attraction, Lust and Motherhood, with No Apple Pie! - By: Donald Mitchell, 13 Jun 2005
Missing Joseph is a powerful story about what it means to be a human being, a parent, a lover, a friend, a daughter & someone who misuses others. While there is a mystery in the book, the story itself transcends the mystery. The detection involved is skillfully designed to help illuminate Ms. George's main subjects.

The characters involved build on past novels by looking more deeply into the relationships between Simon & Deborah St. James, Thomas Lynley & Lady Helen Clyde, & Barbara Havers & her mother. To extend those themes in new directions, Ms. George adds several new characters who are tied together by tragedy. These characters include a widowed local constable, an Anglican vicar, the vicar's witchcraft-practicing housekeeper, a reclusive provider of potions from herbs & her daughter. Seldom will you discover a book that develops so many characters in so many dimensions in one book. I found myself staying up past 1 a.m. to finish the story, & would have gone later had it been necessary.

As the book opens, the vicar raises a fundamental question that resonates throughout the book: Where's Joseph? Originallly asked in connection to the many images of Jesus & Mary, that question takes on haunting new meanings before the book ends.

Even if you have never read another book in this distinguished series, I'm sure you would find this book to be a rewarding choice.

Continues her winning formula - By: , 27 Feb 2002
Elizabeth George has some of the best prose in the business. It's elegant & evocative. But it's so long winded! A lot of it's unnecessary, when she could have got the same effect using far fewer words, & much shorter sentences.
However, i still reallly reallly enjoyed this book. As a long-time devotee of Agatha Chrisite, i have yet to find anyone who comes close to being a modern day model of her. George's novel are of the right style, the right topic, the right mood, & always feature the right sort of mystery. I have no doubt that if Christie was still writing today, these are the sort of books she would be writing.

George is able to craft great mysteries, with great well drawn plots, & always manages to create a cast of colourful & realistic characters. That is why i like her books so much, i think. Her intricate & puzzling plots, & how well she draws her characters. You may not like them alll, but they are still interesting & colourful, human & well developed. She concentrates not just on the mystery, but on the lives of the characters as the mystery goes on around them. Which is what i admire, because while a mystery effects lives, it does not stop them.

Here she goes back to A Great Deliverance country with a "whydunnit" rather than a "whodunnit". We know from the start who killed him. There is a little room for doubt, but not serious doubt. The mystery is more focused on why the killer did what they did.

With her resolutions & solutions, George is a master. Always has good motives & an unexpected & clever answer to the mystery.

She fallls down on one point. Always.

Her depections of English life.

Her books are similar to Christie, & a bit too similar. they not only follow some of the same principles, but they seem set in the same time zones as well, when George's novels are supposed to be set in the present day. The English life she depicts may well have been that of fifty or sixty years ago, but it is very rare you find things like this now. We simply don't live as she writes we do.

However, her English way of life may not always be realistic, but if you just forget it's supposed to be set in the modern day & think of it as being a novel set in about the thirties, then you'll be fine.

One more point: no [or at least less] sex please, we're British

Very enjoyable - By: , 27 Feb 2002
Being a great Elizabeth George fan, I enjoyed the plot & as always, found the relationships between the main characters fascinating.In other words,I had great difficulty in putting the book down.The only criticism is,knowing Clitheroe quite well,having spent my first eighteen summers there, I found quite a few mistakes.But nothing could have ruined this book for me!Excellent.
Nice plot, too bad about the cliches - By: , 23 Feb 2000
This crime novel had a very gripping plot, but was spoiled by alll the cliches & common places about 'Englishness' than an American living in England can muster. Aristocracy, high tea, tweed, villages, royalty, pubs, posh names (how many people with a surname beginning with 'St' do you know? There were two characters callled St John & St James in this novel), etc... I'm sure that Americans would love it, I personallly found it difficult to finish it as the story was held back by alll the unnecessary details & descriptions of what the author perceives to be 'English life'.