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What Came Before He Shot Her
 
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What Came Before He Shot Her (Paperback)

by Elizabeth George (Author)
3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
RRP: £6.99
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Frequently Bought Together

What Came Before He Shot Her + With No One as Witness + A Place of Hiding
Price For All Three: £16.46

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Product details

  • Paperback: 656 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks (29 Nov 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0061253790
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340935576
  • ASIN: 034093557X
  • Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11.2 x 4.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 46,507 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #6 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > G > George, Elizabeth > Complete List

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Product Description

Review
'Elizabeth George takes a brave descent into the world of gangs and teenage murderers . . . the novel shows how even the best of intentions can be defeated by poverty, bad breaks and bad guys.' (Daily Express )

'Why haven't I read Elizabeth George before? Maybe because someone told me she was a serious crime writer, and I listen to thrillers to escape, not to think. All this will change; she's brilliant' (Sue Arnold, Guardian )

'George's best since her 1998 debut. Read it and weep.' (Kirkus Reviews )

'Absolutely remarkable and a great achievement' (Boyd Hilton on BBC Radio FiveLive )

'A very powerful novel.' (Kate Mosse )

'It shifts the way you look at things – I was completely drawn into this world I knew nothing about and I’m full of admiration' (Sarah Harrison )

Product Description
The shocking conclusion of Elizabeth George’s previous bestseller, WITH NO ONE AS WITNESS, saw the wife of New Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley gunned down in the street outside her home. Under arrest for the crime is a twelve-year-old boy, Joel Campbell. What possible motive could he have? What chain of events could have led such a child from the housing estates of North Kensington to the elegant streets of Belgravia with such deadly intent? The answer to these questions is a complex mixture of fate and circumstance. Abandoned (albeit involuntarily) by his parents, Joel and two siblings are dumped on the doorstep of his aunt’s house. Kendra, childless and with two marriages behind her, is doing her best to turn her life around; responsibility for three troubled children is not what she had in mind. Drugs, neglect, violence and poverty are commonplace in North Kensington. Joel does his best to look out for his family, but that involves a Faustian pact. And the Devil will have his pay.

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

What Came Before He Shot Her
70% buy the item featured on this page:
What Came Before He Shot Her 3.1 out of 5 stars (34)
£4.48
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17% buy
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£3.86
With No One as Witness
6% buy
With No One as Witness 3.9 out of 5 stars (15)
£5.99
Playing for the Ashes (Inspector Lynley Mystery)
4% buy
Playing for the Ashes (Inspector Lynley Mystery) 3.9 out of 5 stars (8)
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Customer Reviews

34 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (6)
2 star:
 (6)
1 star:
 (7)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.1 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed Elizabeth George fan, 22 Jul 2007
By Peter Lolley "Sandfordian" (Wales) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: What Came Before He Shot Her (Paperback)
I waited eagerly for my parcel to arrive with the latest EG book. What a let down ! She writes in a totally different way and uses unfamiliar language and the story is rambling, violent, almost shambolic, with no reference until the final page of the characters her readers know and love. If you are a fan of the Lynley mysteries, dont buy this book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Thought He'd Never Shoot Her!!, 2 Oct 2007
By Kevan James "yeskev" - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: What Came Before He Shot Her (Paperback)
I'll be honest, I've gone off Elizabeth George's books over the years, mainly becuase her characters are such stereotypes - stereotypical English Toffs in Inspector Lynley and his friends (and most of all his wife - was I the only one glad to see her go?), stereotypical 'commoners' in Barbara Havers. And what is worse her Toffs are so anacronistic - did she steal them from Agatha Christie?

So I approached this book with some degree of pleasure - something different. But blimey, don't it go on!? I got to the point where I didn't care what happened - it could easily have lost 200 pages (almost plucked at randum since it felt that the same things kept happening over and over again)

And more stereotypes! This time stereotypical black Londoners - do they really all say "innit" at the end of ever sentence?

I'm sure that if I had been anywhere other than stuck on an Air India flight from New York with nothing else to read and only Asian films available to watch, I would have given up on this after 100 pages or so.

Massive disappointment!!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A Wretched Look at Wretchedness in London, 28 Sep 2007
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: What Came Before He Shot Her (Paperback)
If you read Elizabeth George because you like mysteries solved by Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, you should take careful stock before taking on What Came Before He Shot Her. This isn't another mystery of that sort in that series.

Instead, this is a modern version of Dickens in looking at the poor and downtrodden in London to see how bad genes, a horrible environment and rotten luck can combine to bring down those who mean well. In making that comparison, however, I must note that this book lacks the humor, wit and energy of Dickens.

In the books 548 pages, Ms. George does save some interesting surprises. But I didn't find those surprises worth wading through the first 250 pages to find.

So what is the book about? A grandmother has been raising three of her grandchildren after their father has been killed and their mother has gone off the deep end. As the book opens, the grandmother dumps the three on the doorstep of another daughter who is recently divorced while the grandmother heads off to Jamaica to be with her boyfriend. The oldest child is a fifteen-year-old, Vanessa (Ness), who finds herself fascinated by fashion, drugs and getting attention from men. Naturally, all that leads her into deep trouble. The middle child, Joel, is the surrogate father for his younger brother, Toby, who isn't quite right in the head. In suburban circumstances with a normal family life, Joel would have done well. But placed in an impossible situation, he finds that the family's troubles just escalate. As Joel tries to solve those problems, the problems just seem to get worse. Before the end of the book, Joel finds himself being drawn into the gang culture to achieve other purposes than furthering the gang.

To describe the book that way is to make it more interesting than it really is. I didn't find myself identifying with any of the characters. As a result, I found that I wasn't drawn into the story. I also found the dialect to be challenging to read and understand. I was tempted to stop before I got to the end. Having finished the book, I can see that that decision would have been a good one. This book just didn't work for me.

If you want to read a book about the problems of parentless children in London who live on the edges of society, this book may be of some interest. I suspect, however, that there's probably an autobiography of someone who really came from such a background that you can read . . . which would be more interesting and relevant.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Elizabeth George - What came before he shot her
I purchased this book because I knew the author was the writer of the "Lynley Mysteries". The only mystery with this book is where was Lynley?? Read more
Published 11 months ago by P. E. Carnell

5.0 out of 5 stars A departure from the Lynley-based novels but even more compelling in its own way
Was not disappointed in the least, as some reviewers were. George has written a novel which takes the reader into a world which is richly detailed. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Layla

1.0 out of 5 stars Cruel
As others have written before, I couldn't finish the book, I had to stop after 400 pages, and just read the end. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Ritita

1.0 out of 5 stars Stick to what you do best...
Having waded my way through "With no one as witness" which I felt was overly long, I approached this one with some trepidation. And I can't finish it. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Tatiana Beaverhausen

4.0 out of 5 stars A brave, but unusual ,George
Not surprisingly, Elizabeth George's departure from the Lynley sequence of crime stories has divided readers - indeed, Lynley doesn't appear at all, and at the end we have a view... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Mondoro

2.0 out of 5 stars Ignorance of Welfare State
As an American the writer shows her ignorance of the British welfare state. This family would have had help from all the agencies with child benefit guardians allowance etc. Read more
Published 13 months ago by P. Preston

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent departure from murder mysteries
A brave departure from her normal genre, Elizabeth George should be applauded for trying something different and, in my opinion, succeeding. Read more
Published 13 months ago by BookWorm

3.0 out of 5 stars Not for the faint of heart.
Written as a prequel to "With no one as witness", readers should not expect another Lynley and Havers' mystery. This is grim stuff. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Miss Jane

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story - I want to know what happens next
As a big fan of the Lynley/Havers books and disappointed by her previous attempt to move away from these two as the main characters in a book, I started this with a little... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Kathryn

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but depressing
I have read all of Elzabeth George's books and have enjoyed most of them, give or take a few! It does seem to be the way of detective writers to start off with smallish, pithy... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Jane Watson

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