Works by
Elizabeth George
(Writer)
[1949 - ]

Fiction

Inspector Lynley Series

1. A Great Deliverance (1988)
   A baby's cry echoes on lonely nights through Keldale Valley in Yorkshire. Three hundred years ago, when Cromwell's raiders swept through a village in this valley, not a living creature was to be found on its fog-shrouded streets. The entire population had taken refuge in Keldale Abbey. But then, as the legend goes, an infant began to cry-and the villages knew they had escaped Cromwell's ravages only to be betrayed by a babe. So they smothered the child to silence it.
   
   To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale's lush green valleys.
   
   Now, into this pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes New Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley. Accompanied by Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a particularly savage murder which has stunned the peaceful countryside.
   
   Fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found, clad in her best silk dress, seated in the great stone barn beside her father's decapitated corpse. Her first and only words were: "I did it. I'm not sorry." She has refused to speak since. The priest who found young Roberta insists the girl is innocent. The villagers, who have known the girl all of her life, concur. The local police, however, maintain that she's guilty of the brutal slaying of one of the region's most respected citizens.
   
   As Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale's dark labyrinth of scandals, they uncover a series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley-and in their own lives as well.
   
   In A Great Deliverance Elizabeth George probes the delicate motivations of the heart against a backdrop of buried scandals, unresolved antagonisms and dizzying ambiguities. It was her debut novel, the winner of the Agatha and Anthony Awards for best first novel as well as France's Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere. It was nominated for both a Macavity and an Edgar. It has been optioned for television by the BBC

2. Payment in Blood  (1989)
   At the great Scottish manor house of Westerbrae, a London theatrical company gathers to hear a controversial new play. By the evening's end, the beautiful playwright has been brutally murdered in her bed-and Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley becomes immediately embroiled in a crime whose genesis is tangled in the obligations of love and the consequences of betrayal.
   
   With orders to keep the case from the press as long as possible because of the notoriety of the principal suspects, Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers travel to the isolated estate. Among their suspects: the most powerful theatrical producer in Britain, two of the nation's most beloved stars, and the woman Lynley loves.
   
   For Lynley, the investigation requires all the delicacy he can muster-and it forces him to face a personal dilemma as well. For present at Westerbrae on the night of the murder is Helen Clyde, a woman with whom Lynley shares a complicated history and an enduring friendship that has deepened into love. The fact that she occupied the room next to the murder victim cannot be overlooked. The fact that she did not occupy it alone cannot be ignored.
   
   Fighting to overcome a jealousy that threatens to cloud his judgment and emotions so troubled they could lead to fatal mistakes, Lynley finds himself beset at every turn by family scandals, fierce theatrical rivalries, and shattering revelations. When the living occupy his thoughts more powerfully than the dead, the question becomes whether he can walk the treacherous line between the clinical detachment of a professional investigator and the seething turmoil of a lover.
   
   For in the murder house, motives run very deep indeed. Outraged over what she sees as the kid-glove handling of an upper-crust murder, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers strikes out on her own, putting her career at risk and questioning her deepest professional loyalty as she begins a relentless search into the secrets that haunt not one family but two, and hold them to silence.
   
   Filled with menace and suspense, Payment in Blood is as much rooted in the unexplored regions of the human heart as in the unforgiving Scottish countryside, where the blood that binds can also kill.

3. Well-Schooled in Murder (1990)
   Old school loyalties entangle Thomas Lynley in a case that promises to be both tragic and troubling. A boy has gone missing from Bredgar Chambers, an independent school in the heart of West Sussex, and John Corntel, the lad's housemaster, has turned up at New Scotland Yard to ask for Lynley's help. Because West Sussex is not within his jurisdiction, Lynley knows he should keep well clear of the case, but the boy within the man remembers his own school days at Eton and his former close ties with John Corntel. Thus, in Well-Schooled in Murder, Lynley finds himself deeply involved in the search for a child and, too soon, for that child's murderer.
   
   With the assistance of Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers and forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James, Lynley seeks the identity of an amoral killer. As the inspector and his sergeant question school prefects, the Headmaster, and both teachers and pupils closest to the dead boy, they begin to sense that something extraordinary and evil is going on at this privileged enclave of the elite's children. And the key that will unlock the reality of Matthew Whateley's death lies in uncovering the secrets and undermining the loyalties of a closed society.
   
   For Lynley, who is mourning the absence of Helen Clyde, for Sergeant Havers, who is trying desperately to escape the responsibilities of her claustrophobic family life, and for Simon St. James, whose marriage is disintegrating for reasons he cannot understand, the investigation into Matthew's death will lead perilously close to their own emotional wounds. It will be these personal issues, as much as the cryptic clues that refuse to yield a definitive suspect, that may blind them all to the signs of another murder in the making-and to a terrible act of desperation that will break down the barriers of the past to expose a truth too long hidden in the name of love.
   
   This is a highly charged work of dark motives, powerful feelings, and treacherous infidelities that takes the reader even deeper into he interlocking lives of Lynley, St. James, and Havers.

4. A Suitable Vengeance (1991)
   It was meant to be a festive engagement weekend. But, when Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his fiancée, Deborah Cotter, arrive at Howenstow, Lynley's family home, they find the atmosphere rife with tension.
   
   For Lynley's friend, forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James, who is struggling with the dual pain of losing Deborah and of watching his sister involve herself in an unsavory relationship, the weekend stretches out interminably. Only the presence of his old friend, Helen Clyde, affords him any comfort. As for Lynley, estranged from his mother and now faced with the fact that his younger brother has returned to an earlier drug dependence, home is full of tormenting memories he'd much rather forget.
   
   Then a journalist is found gruesomely murdered in the nearby village of Nanrunnel, and the engagement party is well and truly over. Though the crime is out of Lynley's jurisdiction as a criminal investigator for New Scotland Yard, it soon becomes his primary concern-for the majority of the evidence points not only to the man who manages his estate but ultimately to Lynley's own family.
   
   More violent deaths will follow, as will a crushing betrayal of love and friendship. As St. James assists Lynley in painstakingly piecing together the forensic evidence at each crime scene, a clear picture of the real motives for each death begins to emerge. But what St. James can't fully understand-and what Lynley is unwilling to speak of-is that blood ties are nearly unbreakable in this Cornwall village, as are the bonds between the Howenstow aristocrats and those who have long served them and who would keep their secrets to the grave.

5. For the Sake of Elena (1993)
   Elena Weaver was a surprise to anyone meeting her for the first time. In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings she exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her bedroom walls. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare from her home in London, in Cambridge-where Elena was a student at St. Stephen's College-her father and his second wife each had their own separate image of the girl. As for Elena, she lived a life of a casual and intense physical and emotional relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve-until someone, lying in wait along the route she ran every morning, first bludgeoned then strangled her.
   
   Unwilling to turn the killing over to the local police, the university calls in New Scotland Yard. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, enter the rarefied world of Cambridge University, where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions.
   
   For both officers, the true identity of Elena Weaver proves elusive. Each relationship the girl left behind casts new light both on Elena and those people who appeared to know her best-from an unsavory Swedish-born Shakespearean professor to the brooding head of the Deaf Students Union. What's more, Elena's father, a Cambridge professor under consideration for a prestigious post, is a man with his own dark secrets. While his past sins make him neurotically dedicated to Elena and blind him to her blacker side, present demons drive him toward betrayal.

6. Missing Joseph (1994)
   Chance and bad weather led Deborah St. James and the vicar of Winslough to London's National Gallery to view Leonardo da Vinci's study for his Virgin and Child. The vicar's comment that Joseph is missing from the picture strikes a chord with Deborah, whose inability to bear a child has caused her deep grief and widened the growing rift between her and her husband. Comforted by the vicar's words and affected by his description of the solitude and opportunities for contemplation surrounding his northern village, Deborah persuades Simon to take her on a country holiday in Lancashire where she can regain her peace of mind and see the vicar again. There is only one detail that mars their plans: They arrive to discover that the vicar is dead.
   
   The coroner's inquest has returned a verdict of "death by misadventure," a case of accidental poisoning. But, as Simon St. James quickly realizes, accidentally ingesting this particular poison is nearly impossible. With the assistance of his old friend Thomas Lynley, he intends to find out why no charges were brought against the mysterious, sensual woman who met with the vicar on the night he died and fed him a dinner that was laced with death.
   
   The answer lies hidden among the complex relationships found in this rural northern village, including those between the widowed local constable and a young housekeeper who dabbles in witchcraft; between a reclusive herbalist and her teenage daughter, whose budding sexuality is leading directly to tragedy; between a reluctant bridegroom with a roving eye and his rich, spoiled wife; between the vicar himself, a man with secrets, and his own parishioners.
   
   With a plot that peels away layer after layer of personal history to uncover the torment of a fugitive spirit, Missing Joseph tells an irresistible story of motherhood, loss, love, and disappointment.

7. Playing for the Ashes (1995)
   When country milkman Martin Snell makes his usual delivery to fifteenth-century Celandine Cottage one fine spring morning in Kent, he expects to be greeted by the cottage's seductive tenant, Gabriella Patten, not the ugly remains of a fire pointing to murder.
   
   A burnt-out chair, a peculiar pattern of soot on the walls, an asphyxiated corpse, two footprints, and a collection of discarded cigarette butts bring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers out of their London territory and into conflict with the local investigator whose turf they are invading. Treading carefully, they begin investigating the ripples of shock spreading outward from the crime: from Gabriella Pattern's husband, who knows of his wife's faithlessness and declares himself completely indifferent, to the estranged wife of a member of the national cricket team whose hopes for a reconciliation with her husband have been permanently smashed; from a former lover of Gabriella who has sworn her off to save his marriage, to an angry teenage boy whose holiday with his father was canceled at the crook of a mistress's finger; from a wealthy older widow whose influence has allowed a much younger man to live his dream of playing cricket, to a former prostitute faced with a devastating choice in the wake of a murder whose victim she has never met and yet whose presence has long shadowed her life.
   
   As all of England, as well and the magnetic world of national cricket, discovers itself reeling from the shock of this particular crime, Lynley and Havers find themselves working on the most frustrating case of their careers: the perfect crime. When in an act of desperation Lynley breaks department rules to flush out the killer, he risks being pulled from the case and jeopardizes his career with New Scotland Yard.
   
   In Playing for the Ashes, a deft study of human nature and a crime with too much evidence result in a powerful work of fiction that pulls the reader into a fully created world to explore the dark side of passion and self-delusion.

8. In the Presence of the Enemy (1996)
   Hailed as the "king of sleaze," tabloid editor Dennis Luxford is used to ferreting out the sins and scandals of people in exposed positions. But when he opens an innocuous-looking letter addressed to him at his tabloid The Source, he discovers that someone else excels at ferreting out secrets as well.
   
   He learns from this letter that ten-year-old Charlotte Bowen has been abducted, and if Luxford does not admit publicly to having fathered her, she will die. But Charlotte's existence is Luxford's most fiercely guarded secret, and acknowledging her as his child will throw more than one life and career into chaos.
   
   Luxford knows that the story of Charlotte's paternity could make him a laughingstock and reveal to his beautiful wife and son the lie he's lived for a decade. Yet it's not only Luxford's reputation that's on the line: It's also the reputation-and career-of Charlotte Bowen's mother. For she is the Undersecretary of State for the Home Office, one of the most high-profile Junior Ministers and quite possibly the next Margaret Thatcher.
   
   Knowing that her political future hangs in the balance, Eve Bowen refuses to let Luxford damage her career by printing the story or by calling the police. So the editor turns to forensic scientist Simon St. James for help. It's a case that fills St. James with disquiet, however, for none of the players in the drama seem to react the way one would expect, considering the gravity of the situation.
   
   Then tragedy occurs and New Scotland Yard becomes involved. Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley soon discovers that the case sends tentacles from London into the countryside, and he must simultaneously outfox death as he probes Charlotte Bowen's mysterious disappearance. Meanwhile, his partner Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, working part of the investigation on her own and hoping to make the coup of her career, draws closer to a grim solution-and to danger-than anyone knows.
   
   In the Presence of the Enemy is an insightful novel about ideals corrupted by self-interest, about the sins of parents visited upon children, and about the masks that hide people from each other and from themselves.

9. In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (1999)
   Calder Moor is a wild and deadly place: Many have been trapped in the myriad limestone caves, lost in collapsed copper mines, injured on perilous gritstone ridges. But this time, when two bodies are discovered in the shadow of the ancient circle of stones known as Nine Sisters Henge, it is clearly not a case for Mountain Rescue. The corpses are those of a young man and woman. Each met death in a different fashion. Each died violently.
   
   To Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, brought in to investigate by special request, this grisly crime promises to be one of the toughest assignments of his career. For one of the victims was Nicola Maiden, the daughter of a former officer in an elite undercover unit at New Scotland Yard and a man Lynley once regarded as a mentor. Now, as Lynley struggles to find out if Nicola's killer was an enemy of her father's or one she earned herself, a disgraced Barbara Havers, determined to redeem herself in the eyes of her longtime partner, crisscrosses London seeking information on the second murder victim.
   
   He is Terry Cole, a struggling artist of questionable talents and even more questionable monetary assets. How or even if he knows Nicola Maiden is a mystery to everyone, for no one in Nicola's family can identify the young man. And no one in the area has ever seen him before his body is found on the moor.
   
   The more dark secrets Lynley and Havers uncover, the more they learn that neither the victims nor the suspects are exactly who they appear to be. And once again they come up against the realization that human relationships are often murderous and that the blood that binds can also kill.

10. A Traitor to Memory (2001)
    A hit and run on a nighttime rainy street in north London...a virtuoso violinist who loses his ability to play and his memory of music in a single moment...a horrifying crime buried twenty years in the past...a father and son enmeshed in each other's life...a chance for redemption for everyone concerned, including the detectives.

11. With No One as Witness (2005)
    Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley takes on the case of his career. When it comes to spellbinding suspense and page-turning excitement, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George always delivers. As the Wall Street Journal raves, "Ms. George can do it all, with style to spare." In With No One as Witness, Elizabeth George has crafted an intricate, meticulously researched, and absorbing story sure to enthrall her readers. Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley is back, along with his longtime partner, the fiery Barbara Havers, and newly promoted Detective Sergeant Winston Nkata. They are on the hunt for a sinister killer.

12. What Came Before He Shot Her (2006)
    The brutal, inexplicable death of Inspector Thomas Lynley’s wife has left Scotland Yard shocked and searching for answers. Even more horrifying is that the trigger was apparently pulled by a twelve-year-old boy. Who is he? Where did he come from? And what were the circumstances that led to his final act of desperation?
    
    That story begins on the other side of London in rough North Kensington, where the three, mixed-race, virtually orphaned Campbell children are bounced first from their grandmother to their aunt.

13. Careless in Red (2008 release)

• Write Away (2004)
  Ever want to know how an internationally best selling author crafts one of her books?  Write Away not only illuminates the process used by Elizabeth George when she puts together one of her crime novels, but it also gives specific illustrations from her work and from the work of best selling commercial and literary novelists from around the world. 

• The Evidence Exposed (1999)
  A collection of short stories including "The Evidence Exposed" (Published 1990 in Sisters in Crime 2, Marilyn Wallace, ed.); "The Surprise of His Life" (Published 1996 in Women on the Case, Sara Paretsky, ed.) and "I, Richard" (Published 1999 in Murder and Obsession, Otto Penzler, ed.)

• Crime from the Mind of a Woman (2002), Elizabeth George, ed.

• I, Richard (2002)
  This collection of short stories is an extraordinary offering that deftly explores the dark side of everyday people--and the lengths to which they will go to get what they want most. In these five tantalizing and original tales, Elizabeth plumbs the depths of human nature--and human weakness--as only she can. I, Richard is filled with page-turning drama, danger, and unmatched suspense. 

• A Moment on the Edge: 100 Years of Crime Stories by Women (2004)
  In A Moment on the Edge, bestselling author Elizabeth George has selected a stunning collection of twenty-six crime stories from some of the best practitioners of the genre, who also happen to be some of the most successful women writers of our time. These shocking and compulsively readable stories are arranged chronologically, starting with the classic "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell (1917). Also included are stories by Golden Age mystery writers Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh, and New Golden Age author Sara Paretsky, as well as selections by writers outside the genre, such as Shirley Jackson and Nadine Gordimer.