Susan Elizabeth George was born on 26/04/1949 in Warren, Ohio. A year later, her family moved to the San Francisco area, where she grew up and attended school. She wanted to be a writer as a child and was given her ??first typewriter at age 7.

The reason why Elizabeth George did not set her thrillers in the US but in the UK has to do with her youth. At that time, a family had adopted a girl in the neighbourhood of Manchester, with whom she became friends quickly. This girl kept telling stories about her homeland and in great detail the then 12-year-old Elizabeth George was very impressed by these.

In 1965, at the age of 16, she went on a trip to England and was taken with its history, traditions, buildings and landscapes. Elizabeth George studied English and then taught English and literature at a high school. Apart from this, she made her degree in psychology. She is professor of literature and English language.

The marriage with her first husband, Ira Toibin, whom she married at the age of 21, lasted for 24 years. Subsequently Elizabeth George worked at universities in the US, Canada and the UK, where she mainly taught creative writing.

In 1983, her husband, Ira Toibin, bought a computer to write his PhD thesis. Within weeks, Elizabeth George wrote her first novel at this computer, A Great Deliverance. In this novel, the first in which later series hero Thomas Lynley appeared, the author describes, among other things, the issue of sexual violence in the family and the consequences for the victims.

From the beginning, the writer had followed the plan to continue her novels as a series. She also enjoyed reading books and finding recurring characters. In her opinion, it's the characters that captivate the reader of a book, which is why she dedicates the characters in her novels a lot of time to portray them realistically.

Although she had never lived in England, Elizabeth George harboured a soft spot for the British Crime tradition for a long time, so it is not surprising that the novels of Thomas Lynley and his assistant, Barbara Havers, are based in the UK. Thomas Lynley, Lord Asherton, is financially independent and comes from a rich family. In contrast, Barbara Havers comes from a humble background.

The two main characters are finely drawn and detailed, so the stories do not only rely on the deed, victims and perpetrators, but the reader always learns something about the private lives of Lynley and Havers. Over the entire series Lynley and Havers, as well as other recurring characters, develop further.

All her novels are so-called "whodunit" stories, which means that the offender will be known only at the end. The only exception is the novel What Came Before He Shot Her. Elizabeth George initially had this actually planned as part of the novel With No One as Witness but it would have made the novel about 1500 pages thick. This seemed to her too much, so that she uncoupled and released it as a standalone novel. In addition, Thomas Lynley and Havers do not have a central role in this novel but only appear marginally towards the end.

Because of the consistency of the stories as well as the detail of her investigator, Elizabeth George has also been compared with the novelist Dorothy L. Sayers. Today, Elizabeth George lives with her second husband Tom McCabe on an island off Seattle, Washington. In addition, she has a second home in London, in South Kensington.

Awards

For her first book, A Great Deliverance, Elizabeth was honoured with the Agatha Ward and the Anthony Award. These two prizes are awarded for best debuts. In addition, she won the 1990 Grand Prix De Litteratur Policiere.

Novels about Inspector Lynley and Barbara Havers

A Great Deliverance

1989: Payment in Blood

1990: Well-Schooled in Murder

1991: A Suitable Vengeance

1992: For the Sake of Elena

1992: Missing Joseph

1993: Playing for the Ashes

1996: In the Presence of the Enemy

1997: Deception on His Mind

1999: In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

2001: A Traitor to Memory

2003: A Place of Hiding

2005: With No One as Witness

2006: What Came Before He Shot Her

2008: Careless in Red

2010: This Body of Death

2012: Believing The Lie

Many of Elizabeth George’s books have also been released as audio books.