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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 28 |
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 ELIZABETH GEORGE |
She may be the queen
of mystery worldwide
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Every time she tackles a new book, author Elizabeth George likes to pose a fresh artistic challenge for herself. With her latest bestseller, "A Place of Hiding" (Bantam, $26.95), it was moving her two most difficult characters--crippled forensic scientist Simon St. James and his young wife, Deborah--to the foreground and putting them in an unfamiliar new setting.
The result is a rich, full-bodied and complex mystery novel that once more vividly demonstrates why this gifted writer is already being widely-hailed by fans and critics as the most serious challenger for the "Queen of Mystery" title, not only in the U.S., but in England as well.
George is an American novelist
who writes mysteries that take place in England. Her books are
best sellers on both sides of the Atlantic and the new series
of television movies adapted from her books--"The Thomas
Lynley Mysteries"--are rapidly spreading her fame via the
BBC in England and PBS' "Mystery!" series over here.
(Her latest TV mysteries start Aug. 31 on PBS.)
Ever since I read "A Great Deliverance," her first
novel in the Lynley series, I've held the opinion that Elizabeth
George is writing books that will stand the test of time. She
is most often compared to the immortal Dorothy L. Sayers, a writer
George freely admits was a major influence on her as a young
reader of mysteries.
Most fans probably assume those comparisons are rooted in the fact that George's primary detective character, Inspector Thomas Lynley, Earl of Asherton, is titled like Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and moves between the haves and have nots of the English social classes. Though George understands why some people would see that similarity first, she says the Sayers influence was most profound on the way she has structured her novels.
"She wrote what I like to call 'grand tapestry novels, where you have a full story, full exploration of character, a strong sense of place, a theme and all that,'" George told me in a private interview Aug. 14 after her enormously successful book-signing in Bellingham, WA. "I really like that and that's what I try to do in my own novels."
I think George's legion of fans get that, too. Time after time, I've had George fans tell me they're drawn to her books because of the rich character development, her amazingly credible descriptive writing of the settings she chooses for her mysteries and the way her plots seem to rise up out of the characters she creates.
That's surely true of "A Place of Hiding," which takes place on Guernsey, one of the English Channel islands that was occupied by the Germans during World War II. George's detailed rendering of this fascinating landscape and the unique characters she sets in motion on that island are the work of a master novelist who's really writing literature, not hurried genre fiction to be read on buses and trains.
Moreover, I'm deeply impressed by the growth George builds into her small company of continuing characters--Inspector Lynley; Lady Helen Clyde, who becomes his wife in the course of the series; Simon St. James, the crippled forensic scientist who often works on Lynley's investigations; Simon's young wife, Deborah, with whom Lynley once was enamored, and Barbara Havers, Lynley's assistant detective, who comes from the lower classes and seldom lets Lynley forget it.
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is now available in hard cover from Bantam. |
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The relationship of these people to each other remains in a steady state of flux, so they're always interesting people, even when a case is growing cold and there isn't much action in the foreground. Lynley, for instance, is responsible for his old friend Simon having to go through life wearing a heavy leg brace. Lynley's haunted by that, which makes him a vulnerable man despite his great skill as a detective.
George also loves doing what some authors of popular detective series probably couldn't get away with doing: Rotating her characters in and out of the spotlight. In "A Place of Hiding," for instance, Inspector Lynley barely does a walk-on. Instead, Simon St. James steps forward, drawn into helping solve a murder on the island of Guernsey because his wife's American friend becomes the chief suspect.
In her chat with fans in
Bellingham, George explained she doesn't like to drag all five
of her main continuing characters into every novel because she
feels "obligatory scenes" thrown in just to give a
character a "role" in a new plot invariably bog a book
down. She thinks those scenes are forced and seem artificial
to readers. That's why she likes to give them each big roles
only in those mysteries where they're really needed
In our private talk, I asked George if this notion of "rotating"
her leading characters actually helped her avoid growing bored
with her detectives, the way Agatha Christie ultimately grew
tired of Hercule Poirot and Sayers with Peter Wimsey.
"That's exactly what it does," she told me. "I've
also developed a number of other ancillary characters who can
come forward. That keeps it very fresh for me."
In the case of "A Place of Hiding," George made it
clear that she welcomed the chance to focus on Simon and Deborah,
characters she considers "difficult" because of the
curious nature of their relationship. Simon is a good deal older
than Deborah--and he's also aware of her past relationship with
his friend Thomas. She's an artist at heart, but she's living
with a man who often must remain focused for days on the clinical
details of an autopsy or evidence from a crime scene. In "A
Place of Hiding," there's frequent friction between them
and, occasionally, despair.
"There's an interesting conflict between these characters
at the professional level, but also at the emotional level,"
George told her audience. "She's all raw emotion and sensitivity
and artistry and he's all science."
But her characters--all
of them--are so fully drawn that readers aren't likely to miss
Lynley if Simon's in the spotlight or vice versa. (Her first
two unpublished novels featured Simon as the hero, but the third
one, "A Great Deliverance," featuring Lynley, was the
one that got published and made her reputation.)
Though Elizabeth George isn't the only American writer to write
exclusively about English crimes and characters, she's currently
the most successful. Still, she almost always gets a question
from the audience like this: "Are you ever going to write
a book with an American setting?"
George doesn't think so--at least for a long while. ("A Place for Hiding" begins in the Santa Barbara area of California, but doesn't stay there long.) She claims she doesn't actually "see" the sort of details she likes to write about when she looks around her own home environment (She lives in Huntington Beach in Southern California.) By visiting new places in England, she feels herself being stimulated by the freshness of what she finds there and plot ideas and useful characters immediately start filling her mind.
For example, before George started work on the current novel, she thought she might set her next book in Northumberland. But a visit there convinced her the landscape was too similar to other settings she'd used in earlier novels. Her second choice for a visit was Guernsey--and it clicked for her right away.
Before writing begins, George usually decides on her setting, then spends time there with camera and tape recorder, taking notes and snapping pictures. The result is a book filled with authentic locales for every scene.
"The places you see in this novel are actual places in Guernsey," she said. "If I didn't do this, everything in my novels would be generic. I'm not able to just conjure up settings out of thin air."
Why did she ever get started writing about England if she's not English? George explains she's just always loved England and, before she ever went there, had read lots of books about it and watched lots of films and TV programs that inspired her. She also felt the early influence of two great English queens of mystery--Margery Allingham, whose Albert Campion taught her that "a detective can be vulnerable," and Dorothy L. Sayers, who showed her the form she ultimately began to use for her novels.
"England really works
for me," she says. "I've always liked the sense of
tradition and history, the fact that they don't tear down a castle
to put up a mini-mall."
After 13 consecutive successful books--only one of them, "I,
Richard," not in her detective series--George has spent
lots of time in England, has made scores of good friends over
there and has opened up a slew of information sources about how
things operate in the foreign land she's chosen to write about
exclusively. She feels no great motivation to change.
"There's still so much to write about England," she
said. "I don't think I'll ever run out."
Now in her early 50s (born
1949), George is clearly in the prime of a very important writing
career. She was preparing for this life from childhood and began
writing short stories at age seven. While attending Holy Cross
High School in Mountain View, California, she actually wrote
her first novel. She took up novel-writing again in her 20s,
but by then was well-launched on a teaching career. She has taught
high school English and literature classes extensively. moved
on to college classes and seminars. She still teaches creative
writing classes fairly regularly.
With her success, though, comes the problem of getting a life.
George admits she once was two books ahead with her publisher,
but now the publisher has caught up and she's always writing
the one they want right away. The result: She only gets about
a month's time off between books.
Right now Elizabeth George is always among the few names being bandied about by fans and critics for the title of "Quee