Payment in Blood by Elizabeth George

A Great Deliverance was my first Elizabeth George and the first in the Inspector Lynley series. Now, every time I am in a second hand bookshop, I look for the next. There's something so right about reading a crime-detection novel in a gently worn state. You just know that someone else has had a cuppa, glanced out over the garden, maybe even smoked a cigarette (yes you can tell from the book) whilst figuring out the very same case that gorgeous Detective Lynley and homely Detective Havers are solving before your eyes.

This was discovered in Margate, of all places. And I settled down, in a comfy spot to time travel to the Scottish Highlands, where a number of actors and hangers-on are gathered in a drafty old house and dun dun dun...the playwright is brutally murdered in the dead of night. It feels a little like a murder mystery weekend. Enter the detectives and the forensic specialists, and some highly ranking police, and you just know there's so much more to this story.

I enjoyed this one, perhaps not as much as A Great Deliverance, but if you're looking for a great murder mystery, with an excellent plot, setting and well known characters, you can't go wrong here.

Onwards and upwards to Well Schooled in Murder. Only I've just discovered that I should've read A Suitable Vengeance first, so maybe that should be next? 

4 stars

ISBN: 9780553284362

You may also enjoy PD James - A Certain Justice, or A Terrible Beauty by VM Devine, or what about Jo Spain's Beneath the Surface?

Some more great books.