Title : A Banquet of Consequences
Author : Elizabeth George
Narrators : John Lee
Genre : Mystery
Publisher : Penguin Audio
Listening Length : 21 hours 34 minutes
Rating : 5/5
Narrator Rating : 5/5

A young man, William Goldacre, leaps to his death. Soon after famous feminist Clare Abbott is poisoned. Some time after the feminist’s editor and longtime friend Rory Statham escapes another poisoning. The common connection? William’s mother and Clare’s assistant Caroline Goldacre.

The first half of the book introduces us to the characters until we get to know them pretty well. There’s Caroline and her two sons William and Charlie, each pretty disturbed in his own way. Domineering Caroline appears to be a psychopath of the first order and makes life hell for the sane people that surround her. There’s her current husband Alistair and her ex Francis. And then there’s her employer Clare and her editor Rory. All of them seem to be tolerating Caroline fairly well until William jumps off a cliff and it all goes to hell.

Sergeant Barbara Havers and Inspector Lynley don’t quite come into the book until much later. Barbara is still on Detective Superintendent Ardery’s naughty list and Lynley has to really use his persuasive skills to keep her on the case with Detective Sergeant Winston Nkata. As in the previous book, George in in top form. The story is well-layered and built up convincingly. Descriptions are long and expansive, which I love. I also like the fact that she throws in lots of personal detail about the detectives themselves which really gets the reader invested.

This book is read by John Lee and he does an amazing job of bringing out each character’s personality, especially Caroline’s venom-laden tone. Lee also read “A Fine Balance”, where I had issue with this pronouncing Indian words. He does have a distinctive voice, and not as light a tone as say Simon Vance.