A Great Deliverance

A Great Deliverance is the first novel by American mystery and crime author Elizabeth George. The 1988 novel follows Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers as they investigate the murder of William Teys, who was found beheaded on his farm in the Yorkshire Moors. As the investigators get wrapped up in the murder, dark family secrets are unearthed, and the culpability of Teys’s youngest daughter, Roberta, who confessed to the beheading, becomes more and more unclear. The novel is the first entry in the Inspector Lynley series and treats themes such as The Corrosive Nature of Guilt, The Dangers of Class Bias in Great Britain, and How Patriarchy Enables Predatory Behavior Among Men. A Great Deliverance won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, a BBC series that ran in the 2000s, popularized George’s work throughout the UK and Europe.

This guide uses the 1988 Bantam Books edition of A Great Deliverance.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of illness, death, child death, sexual violence and harassment, rape, child sexual abuse, child abuse, emotional abuse, disordered eating, and sexual content.

Plot Summary

Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers travel from London to the Yorkshire village of Keldale to investigate a killing. Farmer William Teys has been found beheaded in his barn. His younger daughter, Roberta, is discovered beside the body, dazed and repeating a flat confession. Lynley and Havers are new partners and struggle to navigate the uncomfortable dynamic created by Lynley’s privilege and Havers’s animosity. Havers comes from a poor background and struggled to find a place in CID. Lynley is a member of an old aristocratic family, and Havers resents his wealth and status.

They begin to investigate the network of relationships in the small village. William’s wife, Tessa, left nearly two decades earlier and now lives under another name in York. The elder daughter, Gillian, ran away at 16 and was never heard from again. In Keldale, Lynley and Havers meet Olivia Odell and her young daughter, Bridie. They also meet Olivia’s sister Stepha Odell, who manages the local lodge; the bitter and malicious church organist, Nigel Parrish; the painter Ezra Farmington, who is known for having a string of affairs across the community; and Richard Gibson, William’s nephew, who stands to inherit the farm.

The investigators examine the physical evidence. St. James, Lynley’s forensic ally, who happens to be on his honeymoon nearby, confirms the family’s dog was drugged before its throat was cut, which suggests premeditation. As St. James helps the investigation, Havers comes to believe that Lynley is very much in love with his friend’s wife, Deborah. While Deborah loves her new husband, Lynley is struggling to deal with this yearning, which may explain his reputation as a womanizer. Havers begins to sympathize with Lynley until she is kept up all night by the sound of Lynley making love to Stepha in an adjoining hotel room.

As revealed by an American couple staying in the same country house where the St. Jameses are honeymooning, the community was struck by tragedy several years earlier when a newborn was left in the ruins of a nearby abbey. The baby is buried in the churchyard, its gravestone bearing a Shakespearean epitaph, but its true identity remains a mystery. Havers, desperate to prove she belongs in CID and wrestling with the bitterness she nurses from her own family history, rummages through Roberta’s room. She notices that the drawers are lined only with classified ads. A coded personal ad on those clippings points to a charity panel featuring someone called Nell Graham. Havers connects the name to a Brontë heroine and concludes Gillian has been keeping in touch all along, writing to her sister through the newspaper.

In London, Havers traces Nell to Testament House, a refuge for runaways. Nell is Gillian; she has rebuilt a life over 11 years, married a man named Jonah, and found purpose in helping vulnerable teenagers. Confronted with her old name and her father’s death, she suffers a breakdown. As Havers worries that she has ruined the chances at solving the case, Lady Helen Clyde, St. James’s lab assistant and Lynley’s friend, steps in and persuades Gillian to come north.

Back at the hospital, Dr. Samuels mediates a meeting between Gillian and Roberta. Through a two-way mirror, Lynley, Havers, and Lady Helen witness Gillian speaking about years of religious gaslighting and sexual abuse by her father. After Tessa’s departure, he escalated the harm. At 16, Gillian fled from the abusive household, leaving a key to Roberta’s door and a newspaper code. She believed, wrongly, that her sister might be able to escape her father’s sexual abuse.

Roberta finally speaks. She describes being coerced into a similar pattern of sexual abuse and, later, a pregnancy that William concealed by leaving the baby in the ruined abbey. The Shakespearean epitaph, Lynley believes, reveals that Father Hart knew about William’s abuse. In the months before his death, William began to groom Bridie, Olivia’s little girl, using the same approach that he did with Roberta and Gillian. Roberta admits to drugging the dog and killing her father for fear that he would continue his pattern of pedophilia with Bridie.

Watching from the next room, Jonah can barely absorb the reality of his wife’s childhood. Havers rushes away to a bathroom and breaks down, her own long-suppressed grief about her brother’s death and her parents’ neglect finally surfacing. Lynley steadies her and, in the rawness of that moment, their antagonism softens.

The investigation’s peripheral mysteries begin to resolve. Lynley confronts Father Hart in the confessional about his role in covering up the abuse, and the priest admits everything.

Lynley’s personal life also develops. Despite his feelings, he accepts that Deborah loves her husband, Simon. He recognizes the pain that his womanizing behavior has caused to those around him, including Lady Helen. He resolves that they might make a better life together and thanks her for her friendship.

Dr. Samuels predicts that Roberta will stabilize and be found competent to stand trial, but also that no jury, once the facts are known, is likely to convict her of murder. Gillian struggles to deal with the aftermath of what she has learned about the abusive household in which she was raised. Lynley drives her to York, where Havers knocks on Tessa Mowrey’s door and asks the mother to meet the daughter she once left. Gillian also reunites with her long-lost mother.