For The Sake of Elena by Elizabeth George
Elena Weaver was a surprise to anyone meeting her for the first time. In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings she exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her walls. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare from her home in London, in Cambridge—where Elena was a student at St. Stephen's College—her father and his second wife each had their own very different image of the girl. As for Elena, she lived a life of casual and intense physical and emotional relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve--until someone, lying in wait along the route she ran every morning, bludgeoned her to death.
Unwilling to turn the killing over to the local police, the university calls in New Scotland Yard. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, enter the rarefied world of Cambridge University, where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions.
For both officers, the true identity of Elena Weaver proves elusive. Each relationship the girl left behind casts new light both on Elena and on those people who appeared to know her best—from an unsavory Swedish-born Shakespearean professor to the brooding head of the Deaf Students Union.
What's more, Elena's father, a Cambridge professor under consideration for a prestigious post, is a man with his own dark secrets. While his past sins make him neurotically dedicated to Elena and blind to her blacker side, present demons drive him toward betrayal.
The above synopsis was taken from goodreads.com.
This is my second time reading Elizabeth George. The first book was about six years ago. I wasn't very wowed by her then but am glad to say that For the Sake of Elena fares much better. With so many to be read books, I tend to get impatient if a particular book did not live up to expectation. While For the Sake of Elena wasn't great, it was quite good and I was quite patient with it.
Sad to say, I wasn't able to guess who the murderer was but it was revealed quite suddenly and there wasn't any clue for me to pick on as to who it might be. Perhaps I am not as good as I was in picking up clues nowadays in such detective novel. :)
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