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What Came Before He Shot Her
by Elizabeth George
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Harper (2007-09-01)
ISBN: 0060545631
EAN: 9780060545635
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Binding/Media: Mass Market Paperback - 736 pages
Edition: First Thus
Release Date: 2007-08-28
SKU: 0Z-C728-W117
Condition: As New
Comments: unread - cover shows minor shelf wear. Excellent copy
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A kind and well-loved woman was brutally and inexplicably murdered—the pregnant wife of a respected police inspector—and her death has left Scotland Yard shocked and searching for answers. Perhaps most horrifying of all, the trigger of the weapon that killed her was apparently pulled by a stranger . . . a twelve-year-old boy. The anatomy of a murder, the story of a family in crisis, What Came Before He Shot Her is a powerful, emotional novel full of deep psychological insights, a novel that only the incomparable Elizabeth George could write.
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Customer Reviews
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Excellent book!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-08-18
Apparently quite a few people did not care for this book but I thought it was fabulous! It's very psychologically intense and I couldn't put it down. I'm not a huge fan of the Detective Lynley and Havers characters so I really enjoyed this departure. I wish Elizabeth George would write more of this kind of novel.
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Haunting
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-06-11
This book is a hanuting look into the lives of disadvantaged families and children in London. It is troubling and not a comfortable book to read. I find myself thinking about the children, Vanessa, Joel, and Toby, as well as their aunt and her friend. Elizabeth George has delivered her usual beautifully crafted novel. To look back at the events she portrays is like watching a line of dominos tumble, one by one. I highly recommend this thoughtful, insightful troubling book.
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In many ways her best
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-05-28
This is a very rich novel and in many ways a brilliant novel. Elizabeth George is at her best in portraying the inner lives of people thwarted or in trouble, and her sure-handed portrayal of Joel Campbell stands among her most compelling performances, with "the Blade," whom we see only from the outside, in some respects not far behind. Life can be terrifying and claustrophobic for a twelve-year-old boy even in situations far less grim than that of Joel Campbell, and her evocation of his situation and of his doomed, but reasonable and well-intentioned, efforts to cope with it consistently ring true. This is not, in any particularly meaningful sense, a detective novel, but it is a very good novel even so, and an astonishing effort of imagination. Very few writers have the capacity convincingly to evoke the subjectivity of widely disparate people which Elizabeth George does, and here the fruits of that capacity stand front and center.
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Contrary to general opinion . . .
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-05-25
I think this is Elizabeth George's best. True, there's no Lynley and no Havers. It's a complete departure for George, and I laud her for it. I think it's her most conscientious, most socially and politically engaged book. It's deeply compassionate and it pays attention to a sector of society most detective fiction ignores. The research George obviously did, her capacity to channel the voices of West Indian and other Black British people, her representation of the racial complexities of inner-city London, and her deep engagement with women's suffering all make this book remarkable. Read it! Really!
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A Disappointment
Rating  (1)
Date: 2010-02-17
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I really enjoyed the earlier novels, but starting with (if I remember correctly)A Place of Hiding, Elizabeth George seemed to lose interest in her regular characters (Lynley, Havers, etc.). A Place of Hiding was supposed to be part of the Lynley series, but is actually mostly about completely different characters. The same is true of What Happened Before He Shot Her. It isn't a Lynley series novel in any but the most tangential way, and, sadly, it isn't very well written, either.
I'd miss Havers and Lynley, but I really wish George / her publisher would be honest and just fold up the series instead of pretending these books are part of the Lynley series (and marketing them that way), when the characters from the Lynley series are barely in them. Didn't they think anyone would notice? I can understand why an author might start to feel stale and want to do a different series--that isn't the problem. What I find really annoying is when I've paid good money for a book that's been advertised as being part of a series, and then after reading the first third of the book realizing that it isn't.
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