Inspector Havers

I have been making my way through all of the Inspector Lynley episodes in existence. It occurs to me, as I near the end, that Inspector Lynley is an idiot. The main conflict of the story, at least in the beginning, is that Lynley is an aristocrat who drives a fancy car and appears to do police work just because it's fun and he happens to be okay at it, while his detective sergeant, Barbara Havers is working-class, has a generally bad attitude, and bitterly hates everything about him that is privileged. Here's the thing: Havers is by far the better detective. Lynley is always like, "He can't have murdered anyone, he went to Oxford," or "Yes, I totally pulled strings to get this case because it involves cricket," or "I am too emotionally crippled to focus properly on my job." Meanwhile, Havers is doing all the work, taking all the risks, standing up to everyone, putting all the clues together, and being one hundred percent awesome, all while maintaining an admirable level of snark toward her superiors. If there is one thing I wish we could have seen resolved before the show was cancelled, it's Havers getting promoted to detective inspector and getting out from under Lynley's kind of condescending shadow. Which I hope would have happened eventually. I suppose I could read the books, but the books are way more brutal than the show, and I can't handle them. My plan is to make Ivan read them all, and give me the "good parts" version.