Content area
Full text
IT is an irony - albeit a small one, and one that its perpetrator is tired of addressing - that one of the very best writers of traditional British crime fiction is a Californian. Long-time Brit- lit fan Elizabeth George, daughter by adoption and enthusiasm of Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham, is maintaining their tradition with the style, passion and romantic invention that now sometimes seem to elude the genre's natural heirs.
A PLACE OF HIDING (Hodder, $32.95) is well up with George's best. Less complicated than some of her recent tomes, and with fewer of those frustrating, fully developed ancillary plots that turn out to be absolutely nothing more than red herrings, the novel allows the reader to get to know some well-developed, psychologically complex characters and savour an exotic and well-researched ambience.