"I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can't be taught. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view." -- Elizabeth George
Susan Elizabeth George (born 26 February 1949-) is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain.
Eleven of her novels featuring her lead character Inspector Lynley have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.
"Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.""I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.""I don't think anyone could write about another culture and get it 100 percent accurate.""It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.""Lots of people want to have written; they don't want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.""Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps."
George was born in Warren, Ohio to Robert Edwin and Anne (née Rivelle) George, the second of two children (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 was a student of English, receiving a teaching certificate from the University of California, Riverside. While teaching English in the public school system, she completed a master's degree in counseling and psychology.
George married Ira Jay Tiobin in 1971 and they divorced in 1995.
Her first published novel was A Great Deliverance in 1988, featuring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley (aka Lord Asherton of noble birth) from Scotland Yard; Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley's partner, from a very working-class background; Lady Helen Clyde, Lynley's girlfriend and later wife, of aristocratic birth as well; and Lynley's friends Simon and Deborah St. James, an upper-class man and his wife, daughter of his family's valet/butler.