George, Elizabeth (1949-…), an American author, is known for her novels about a team of Scotland Yard detectives, the aristocrat Thomas Lynley and his assistant, Barbara Havers. Although George is an American, she has been a commercial success writing stories set in England. George’s novels are longer than most detective fiction and strive for greater complexity. Some critics have praised the sophistication and depth of her plotting and the psychological insights she brings to her characters. Others have found her style plodding and her novels padded.
Susan Elizabeth George was born in Warren, Ohio, on Feb. 26, 1949. She taught English in two California high schools from 1974 to 1987. George gained immediate recognition with her first novel, A Great Deliverance (1988). Other books in the Lynley-Havers series are Payment in Blood (1989), Well-Schooled in Murder (1990), A Suitable Vengeance (1991), For the Sake of Elena (1992), Missing Joseph (1993), Playing for the Ashes (1994), In the Presence of the Enemy (1996), Deception on His Mind (1997), In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (1999), A Traitor to Memory (2001), With No One as Witness (2005), What Came Before He Shot Her (2006), Careless in Red (2008), Believing the Lie (2012), Just One Evil Act (2013), A Banquet of Consequences (2015), The Punishment She Deserves (2018), and Something to Hide (2022).
George also wrote A Place of Hiding (2003), a detective story outside the Lynley-Havers series. She wrote a suspense series for young adult readers called “The Edge of Nowhere” (2012-2016). A collection of her short stories was published as I, Richard (2002). In Mastering the Process (2020), George uses examples from her own work on Careless in Red as a guide to the process of writing a novel.
