Susan Elizabeth George (born February 26, 1949[1]) is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain.
Eleven of her novels featuring her main character, Inspector Lynley, have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.
Elizabeth George was born in Warren, Ohio, to Robert Edwin and Anne (née Rivelle) George, their second child – she has an older brother, Robert "Rob" George. Her mother was a nurse, and her father a salesman for a conveyor company. The family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she was eighteen months old. Her father wanted to get away from the Midwestern weather and to get her mother away from her mother's large extended Italian family.
She is a student of English, having received a teaching certificate from the University of California, Riverside. Whilst teaching English in the public school system, she completed a master's degree in counseling and psychology.
George married Ira Jay Toibin in 1971 and they divorced in 1995.
Her first published novel was A Great Deliverance, (1988). It introduces Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, actually Lord Asherton, privately educated (Eton College and Oxford University) and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley's partner, (secondary modern educated and from a working-class background) – both from Scotland Yard. Also, Lady Helen Clyde, Lynley's girlfriend, and Lynley's former school friend, Simon St.James.
