Elizabeth George (1949 – )

She was born in Warren, Ohio, but moved to the San Francisco Bay Area (now a part of Silicon Valley) when she was eighteen months old.

She was a student of English, receiving a teaching certificate. While teaching English in the public school system, she completed an advanced degree in psychology.

Her first published novel was A Great Deliverance in 1988. This novel was to be the beginning of the impressive series of 'Lynley'-novels, each one of them a bestseller.

The entire series of thrillers features the same protagonists:

* Thomas Lynley, a Scotland Yard inspector and of noble birth;
* Barbara Havers, Lynley's assistant, from a very working-class environment;
* Lady Helen Clyde, Lynley's girlfriend and later wife, of noble birth as well.

Other characters, including Lynley's friends Simon and Deborah St. James, recur as well.

George has been endowed numerous international awards, all of her novels have been translated and are now read all over the world. Eleven of the novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

All of her books are set in England, which is peculiar for an American novelist, and she has had to answer the question why this is the case in many interviews.