A Slowly Dying Cause by Elizabeth George

This is the newest installment in the Inspector Linley/Barbara Havers series. But it's preetty far into the book before Linley and Havers make their appearance. And the two spend a lot of the book pondering what to do about the roof on the family estate (Linley) and what to do with her mother's ashes (Havers). I did wonder what Elizabeth George was thinking because Linley and Havers are a lot more ineresting than the MANY characters who populated the first half of the book. 

The mystery is thus: A man named Michael is found stabbed to death in the workshop of his family's tin and pewter company. He's not the nicest guy in the world, having abandoned his first wife and children for a much younger model, Kayla. Michael's brother is smitten with Kayla as is Goron, one of the workers at Michael's firm. Goron turns out to be one of the siblings of Linley's ex. (They and their sister Gwynn had gone into foster care as children.) Michael's ex-wife and her new beau are also in the picture as well as his estranged daughter. And then there's the guy who keeps trying to buy Michael's land, which he does not want to sell. Clearly there are a lot of suspects. Linley and Havers finally get involved in the investigation and figure out what really happened but it's a long slog to get there. 

I have enjoyed this series from the beginning but this was not the best installment. Not enough Linley and Barbara. Too much time spent on really uninteresting characters. And I found it kind of creepy that three of the male characters were involved with females who were too young for them. That's more of an ick factor than is usually associated with this series.