Mystery! "Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Series III"

Socialite Thomas Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) and his hot-blooded partner Barbara Havers (Sharon Small) take to London's seediest back alleys and its sprawling, countryside estates to investigate a string of murders in the highest echelons of English society. Based on the best-selling novels by Elizabeth George, this new third series challenges Lynley and Havers with cases involving the mysterious death of a popular British cricket player; the kidnapping of the illegitimate child of a liberal Labor minister and conservative tabloid editor; and the discovery of a young Pakistani man's body on a secluded beach near an English resort. Inspector Lynley's loyalties are also tested when an investigation into the murder of a shopkeeper leads him to a familiar place -- his family's estate, where evidence is mounting against one of his own. "Playing for the Ashes" premieres Sunday, September 5 at 9 p.m. The next episode in the series airs Tuesday, September 21 at 10 p.m.

An interview with best-selling author Elizabeth George

In 1988, English teacher Elizabeth George of El Toro High School in El Toro, California, hit the big time with her first published novel
A Great Deliverance. That book introduced readers to an unforgettable detective duo: aristocratic Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley and his working class assistant, Sergeant Barbara Havers. Lynley and Havers have since attracted millions of committed fans in eleven enthralling novels, and in 2002, public television turned the best-selling book series into a television drama.

This month, the third series in the "Inspector Lynley Mysteries" airs on TV12, with the first episode, "Playing for Ashes," premiering on Sunday, September 5 at 9 p.m. During this 2002 interview, author Elizabeth George discussed her work at her home in Huntington Beach, California, where she was just putting the finishing touches on the latest Lynley-Havers novel.

What was it like to see your first novel, A Great Deliverance, turned into a film?

It was an unusual experience. The people, the places and the events that I'm writing about are very vivid to me. So my picture of the events that I hold in my mind is naturally not going to be the same as anybody else's, whether that person is a reader or a filmmaker. Having said that, there were things about the film that I felt they got exactly right. For example, the farm at which the incident takes place and the barn where the body is found were exactly as I had imagined them. Those kinds of things were very gratifying to see. Otherwise, it's a little bit like an out-of-body experience.

How did you feel about the choice of actors for Lynley and Havers?

I knew who they were in advance. I had seen Nathaniel Parker in Into Thin Air, when it was on network television. And I had seen Sharon Small, who plays Sergeant Havers, in a British television show called Glasgow Kiss when I was in England. My memory of Nathaniel made me feel that he would do fine as Lynley. He isn't visually anything like Lynley, but I would prefer to have somebody who could play the character, rather than look like the character and not be able to carry him off.

But I was concerned about Sharon, because she is so pretty. Sergeant Havers, my character, is not: she's dumpy and unattractive. The producers had told me that they had had a number of actresses come in and read for the part, and Sharon had come back several times. Every time she just blew them away, she was so wonderful. When I went to see the filming of A Great Deliverance, I happened to go the day of Sharon's big scene where she is talking to Lynley at the end of the case. As soon as I saw her, I knew that she was going to be fine.

I've read that John Thaw's portrayal of Inspector Morse on Mystery! influenced the way Colin Dexter wrote about the character in the Morse novels. Do you see that possibility in your own case?

No, I really don't. I have a very strong image of those two characters, Lynley and Havers. If I began to feel that Nathaniel and Sharon were starting to intrude upon my creative process, then I would probably just stop watching the films. There's a very mysterious thing that occurs when I am writing one of these novels, which is that I feel the characters very intensely.

A Great Deliverance is the first novel in which you team up Lynley and Havers. When you were writing it, were you thinking, this is really clicking?

As I was writing that book, which was my third attempt at an English crime novel, I knew I finally had it. I thought, 'boy, this is it. This does what I want it to do, and this is going to get published.' I was pretty confident of that book. But you know, it was my third attempt, and the other ones were complete novels, too.

Could you talk about the different psychologies of Lynley and Havers?

As I see the characters, Lynley is a man who was born into privileged circumstances. And he is a man who recognizes that it is purely a quirk of fate that has allowed him to be brought up in these circumstances. His father died when he was twenty-two. The manner in which he dealt with that has created a tremendous reservoir of guilt, and it estranged him from his mother for something like sixteen years. In that estrangement, he ended up deserting a younger brother who is ten years his junior and who has a lot of difficulty with drug abuse. That great reservoir of guilt is what underlies a lot of what Lynley does. He operates from a tremendous sense of having failed people in his past.

In contrast, you have Sergeant Havers, who is acutely aware that she is from an underprivileged background and has had to fight her way through. What dominates her behavior is a tremendous need to prove herself the equal of anyone -- because of her accent, because of her education, because of her economic status, not to mention her social status. She knows her brain is the equal of anybody else's.

What authors have influenced you?

The one author who has influenced my writing the most is the English writer John Fowles, who wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Magus, The Collector and other novels. None of his books is like any other. He continually challenges himself artistically.

Your novels also try different approaches.

I try to create a challenge for myself in each book. And sometimes, believe me, I just kick myself afterwards, and say, 'why on earth did you ever attempt this, you idiot!' But I'm always better for the experience. The challenge might be writing about the Pakistani experience in Great Britain. Here I am, an American, I'm going to jump into the mind of a Pakistani woman and talk about how it is to be not only Pakistani, but Pakistani in England. That's a huge challenge. Or it might be a structural challenge. A Traitor to Memory was two novels woven into one. One of them was a first person narrative told by a man. I wanted to see if I could get myself into the voice of a man and maintain that voice throughout that portion of the book.

Considering the amount of detail that goes into your novels, how do you do them so quickly?

One thing that helps is that I've always been an organizational freak. When I start a book, I write a minimum of five pages every day, except weekends. If I'm going on a ski trip, I take my computer with me, get up at 6 a.m., do my five pages, and then go skiing. What that does is allow me to stay present in the story, which makes the writing much easier because I don't have to re-familiarize myself with the intricacies of the plot. Another reason is that I am blessed with an assistant who takes the burden of life off my shoulders. She cooks the meals; she does my shopping; she walks my dog. That liberates my time. And then my husband is very supportive. When we travel, he is in complete agreement that I'm going to get up at 6 a.m., and I'm going to be working on my book.

It's often said that the best way to learn a craft is to teach it. Has your experience teaching creative writing helped in your own evolution as a writer?

Definitely. Art can't be taught; passion can't be taught; discipline can't be taught; but craft can be taught. And writing is both an art and a craft. So when I'm working with my students in their own writing, I can't be quibbling with them over some aspect of their craft if it's something that I myself am not doing in my own writing. That's one thing that teaching does for me. A second thing is that it keeps to the forefront of my mind all those things that go into every artist's toolbox. It puts me in a position of being better able to step back from my own writing, analyze it, and figure out what's wrong with it.

When you were a high school teacher, did you ever dream you'd be a famous author?

While I was teaching, I always knew I was really supposed to be writing. I enjoyed my time at El Toro High School, but I had this sensation deep in the pit of my stomach that I was supposed to be writing. And so in 1983, when my husband at the time was writing his dissertation, he bought a computer. That put this piece of state-of-the-art equipment in the house. So it was put-up or shut-up time for me. I decided to put-up and see if I could do it. My hope was to be successful enough to equal my salary as a high school teacher, so that I could write full time. As far as the books being as successful as they have become, that's been a surprise to me.