This is probably the best of the George's Lynley novels, or I have forgotten how masterful a writer George is. While some of her earlier novels could have an irritating number of characters, plots and subplots that eventually one stopped following page 300, here each character has a role clearly designed for them, the subplots move in a well paced, controlled way towards resolution, each revealing their own conflict and building up their own dramatic tension. I found my attention caught by all of them, except perhaps Zed Benjamin's one, because at the bottom of each of them lie the common questions common people are facing in this world: What is reality? What does it mean, to be a family? How do we come to terms with unfulfilled desires that shape the way we are so much? How do we live our lives when they are broken and devastated? How can you see anyone as she or he really is? What happens to a couple when they stumble upon the real people they are within projection created for them by passion? How does it feel, to be locked in a strange body that is not yours? All these motives are woven in a captivating narrative, where different voices struggle with their understanding of truth, which is always beyond reach, just as the beacon in Morecambe bay, the day of the tidal bore, "awesome to witness, deadlier to encounter"... And there is a subtle humour, shining here and there, and also a sense, when you turn the last page, that a way out of a lifetime of lies can be found, if only we come to face the truth -- not that of the others, but our own, looking at us from within.
