Inspector Lynley Series

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The murder of a wealthy socialite sends a small island into chaos, and it’s up to Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and forensic scientist Simon St. James to solve the case before the killer strikes again in this gripping installation of the renowned Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“A full banquet. As a mystery novel—no, as a novel pure and simple—A Place of Hiding is entertainment of a high order.”—The Washington Post

An isolated beach on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel is the scene of the murder of Guy Brouard, one of Guernsey’s wealthiest inhabitants and its main benefactor. Forced as a child to flee the Nazis in Paris, Brouard was engaged in his latest project when he died: a museum honoring those who resisted the German occupation of the island during World War II. It is from this period that his murderer may well have come. But there are others on Guernsey who want Guy Brouard dead. As forensic scientist Simon St. James and his wife, Deborah, soon discover, seemingly everyone on the history-haunted island has something to hide. . . . And behind all the lies and alibis, a killer is lurking.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • When an elderly woman is killed on a quiet London street, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley embarks on an investigation that will lead him to choose between personal loyalty and professional honor—an “engrossing” (San Diego Union-Tribune) mystery in the acclaimed Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“A superbly paced, all-consuming treat.”—USA Today

When an elderly woman is deliberately run down and killed on a quiet London street, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley must discover why. It is an investigation that will lead him to walk a fine line between personal loyalty and professional honor.

What brought Eugenie Davies to London on a rainy autumn night? Why was she carrying the name of the man who found her body? Could her murder have some connection to a twenty-eight-year-old musical wunderkind, a virtuoso violinist whose talents have been internationally renowned since he was ten?

To answer these questions, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley will put his career in jeopardy even as he tries to safeguard those of his longtime partners Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata. Together, they must untangle the dark secrets and even darker passions of a family whose history conceals the truth behind a horrific crime.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A brutal double murder leads Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers on a complex investigation with intense personal repercussions in this captivating novel of the acclaimed Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“Elizabeth George reigns as queen of the mystery genre.”—Entertainment Weekly

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 ridges. But 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, this grisly crime promises to be the toughest of his career. For the unfortunate Nicola Maiden was the daughter of a former officer in an elite undercover unit, 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, Barbara Havers, his longtime partner, crisscrosses London seeking information on the second victim.

Yet the more dark secrets Lynley and Havers uncover, the more they learn that neither the victims nor the suspects are who they appear to be . . . that human relationships are often murderous . . . and that the blood that binds can also kill.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers faces the most challenging investigation of her career in this “fascinating” (People) installment of the renowned Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“One of George’s best . . . insightful, tense, and compassionate.”—Entertainment Weekly

Balford-le-Nez is a dying seaside town on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town’s small but growing Asian community is found murdered near its beach, the sleepy town ignites. Intrigued by the involvement of her London neighbor—Taymullah Azhar—in what appears to be a growing racial conflagration, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers arranges to have herself assigned to the investigation. Setting out on her own, this is one case Havers will have to solve without her longtime partner, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley—and it’s one of the toughest she’s ever encountered. For Havers must probe not only the mind of a murderer and her emotional response to a case unsettlingly close to her own heart, but also the terrible price people pay for deceiving others . . . and themselves.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers must navigate fraught politics and explosive secrets in this “rich [and] addictively readable” mystery in the renowned Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“Combining the eloquence of P.D. James with a story John Grisham would envy, George serves up a splendid, unsettling novel.”—People

Hailed as the “king of sleaze,” tabloid editor Dennis Luxford is very good at ferreting out the sins and scandals of people in exposed positions. But when he opens an innocuous-looking letter addressed to him, he discovers that someone else excels at it as well. 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 will throw more than one life in chaos. For Charlotte’s mother, Eve, is one of England’s most high-profile Junior Ministers and quite possibly the next Margaret Thatcher. Eve refuses to let Luxford damage her career by printing the story or calling the police.

As Luxford struggles to find help, another tragedy brings Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers into the case—one whose tentacles reach from London to the countryside—as the investigators navigate a world of corrupt self-interest in which the sins of parents are visited upon children.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley becomes embroiled in a case where nothing—and no one—is really what it seems in this “compelling [and] indefinitely engrossing” (People) novel from the renowned Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“Those who haven’t discovered Elizabeth George . . . should rush to read Playing for the Ashes.”—Us

When milkman Martin Snell makes his usual delivery to fifteenth-century Celandine Cottage one morning in Kent, he expects to be greeted by the cottage’s sensual and seductive tenant, Gabriella Patten—not by the ugly remains of a fire pointing to a murder. As Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, begin their investigation, they soon find themselves in conflict with the local investigator—and discover ripples of shock spreading outward from the crime: from the victim’s husband, who claims indifference to her faithlessness, to the estranged wife of a member of the national cricket team, to an angry teenager, a former prostitute, and an ex-lover of Gabriella who has sworn her off to save his marriage.

As all of England, as well as the world of national cricket, reels from the crime, Lynley and Havers find themselves working on the most frustrating—and politically dangerous—case of their careers. And when in an act of desperation Lynley breaks department rules to flush out the killer, he risks his career with New Scotland Yard.

After a grisly death ruins a couple’s vacation, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley must determine whether this small-town tragedy was an accident or the beginning of a sinister plot—a “totally satisfying mystery” (Denver Post) in the #1 New York Times bestselling Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“This rich, intricate novel is a perfect choice for anyone in the market for first-rate summer fiction.”—The Baltimore Sun

Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead—a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Together they uncover dark, complex relationships in this rural village—relationships that bring men and women together with a passion, with grief, or with the intention to kill.

The vicious murder of a young socialite leads Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley into a web of false identities, hidden motives, and buried secrets that some might kill to protect—a thrilling novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“Powerful and deeply affecting, For the Sake of Elena is another satisfying addition to this superb series.”—The Baltimore Sun

In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings, Elena Weaver exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her walls. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare, in Cambridge—where Elena was a student at St. Stephen’s College—her father and his second wife each had their own very different image of the girl. As for Elena, she lived a life of casual and intense relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve—until someone bludgeoned her to death.

Unwilling to involve the local police, the university calls in New Scotland Yard. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers enter a rarefied world where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions. For the officers, the true identity of Elena proves elusive, as each relationship she left behind casts a new light both on herself and on those who appeared to know her best. What’s more, Elena’s father has his own dark secrets. While his past sins make him neurotically dedicated to Elena and blind to her blacker side, present demons drive him toward betrayal. . . .

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Lynley series, hailed as “queen of the mystery genre” (Entertainment Weekly), brings us back to one of Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley’s earliest—and most personal—investigations.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“George proves that the classiest crime writers are true novelists.”—The New York Times

Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton, has brought to Howenstow, his family home, the young woman he has asked to be his bride. But the savage murder of a local journalist is the catalyst for a lethal series of events that shatters the calm of a picturesque Cornwall village and embroils Lynley and Simon Allcourt-St. James in a case far outside their jurisdiction—and a little too close to home. When a second death follows closely on the heels of the first, Lynley finds he can’t help taking the investigation personally—because the evidence points to a killer within his own family.

The investigation of a young schoolboy’s murder leads Inspector Thomas Lynley into the sinister underbelly of an elite public school—a “spectacular” (Los Angeles Times) installment of the #1 New York Times bestselling Inspector Lynley series

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“Powerful . . . sure to delight readers in the mood for a thought-provoking, hard-hitting mystery.”—Baltimore Sun

When thirteen-year-old Matthew Whately goes missing from Bredgar Chambers, a prestigious public school in the heart of West Sussex, aristocratic Inspector Thomas Lynley receives a call for help from the lad’s housemaster, who also happens to be an old school chum. Thus, the inspector, his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, and forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James find themselves once again outside their jurisdiction and deeply involved in the search for a child—and then, tragically, for a child killer.

Questioning prefects, teachers, and pupils closest to the dead boy, Lynley and Havers sense that something extraordinarily evil is going on behind Bredgar Chambers’s cloistered walls. But as they begin to unlock the secrets of this closed society, the investigation into Matthew’s death leads them perilously close to their own emotional wounds—and blinds them to the signs of another murder in the making. . . .

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Inspector Thomas Lynley travels to Scotland to solve the untimely demise of a renowned playwright in the second novel of the #1 New York Times bestselling Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“George writes like Agatha Christie at the top of her game. . . . A joy.” —Washington Post Book World

The career of playwright Joy Sinclair comes to an abrupt end on an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands when someone drives an eighteen-inch dirk through her neck. Called upon to investigate the case in a country where they have virtually no authority, aristocratic Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, grapple for both a motive and a murderer.

Emotions run deep in this highly charged drama, for the list of suspects soon includes Britain’s foremost actress, its most successful theatrical producer, and the woman Lynley loves. He and Havers must tread carefully through the complicated terrain of human relationships while they work to solve a case rooted in the darkest corners of the past and the unexplored regions of the human heart.

The investigation of a vicious murder exposes a quiet community’s sinister web of secrets—the “spellbinding” (Chicago Sun-Times) first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Inspector Lynley series

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“Pure entertainment from its insidious beginning to its gripping end.”—The Washington Post Book World

To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale’s lush green valleys. Three hundred years ago, as legend goes, the frightened Yorkshire villagers smothered a crying babe in Keldale Abbey, where they’d hidden to escape the ravages of Cromwell’s raiders.

Now into Keldale’s pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an axe in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father’s headless corpse. Her first and last words were “I did it. And I’m not sorry.”

Yet as Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale’s dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a shattering series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley—and in their own lives as well.