AUTHORS: The people behind the books we read : They’re Novel Tapestries, by George

Elizabeth George does not look like a serial killer. With a halo of coppery curls, a bright, direct gaze and a qualified but sincere smile, she looks like your cousin from Chicago, or the woman who lives down the street, the one with the beautiful garden. She lives in a gated community in Huntington Beach, for heaven’s sake, in a house spacious and band-box neat--no stacks of yellowing newspapers cluttering the halls, no walls covered with the photos and maps so often revelatory of obsession, no 25 cats.

And yet by her hand some 30 souls, men and women and even a few children, have been strangled, stabbed, shot, decapitated, drowned, often for the most frightfully twisted psychological reasons. Reasons that make perfect sense, if not to the victims or their families then to Elizabeth George.

And, by at least the second to the last chapter, to her team of Anglo sleuths. Pathologist Simon St. James, his wife, Deborah, Lady Helen Clyde and, of course, Sgt. Barbara Havers and Inspector Thomas Linley, New Scotland Yard. Since 1988, these five and a few other recurring characters, have, in one investigative configuration or another, solved murder mysteries all over England. Ten books in all has George written; the first, titled “A Great Deliverance” (Bantam, 1988), won the Agatha and the Anthony awards for best first novel. Since then she has won France’s Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere and Germany’s MIMI, consistently terrific reviews and a permanent place of honor in the hearts of mystery readers around the world--as well as on bestseller lists. She has been compared to all the greats--P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie--and her newest addition, “In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner” (Bantam), already has reviewers trotting out laudatory superlatives.

Which makes George a study of the unexpected--a longtime California resident who has taken her place among the great dames of the British mystery, and a mystery writer whose books are as much modern novels as they are detective yarns.

And even the detecting part is very different from the standard whodunit. George’s characters--the good guys and the bad ones--are all complex, reacting to a variety of emotional and external influences. Her detectives make mistakes, spend pages--chapters even--pursuing the wrong leads, the wrong people, revealing more of themselves, including their flaws, than of the criminal.

The relationships among the five main characters are not easily quantifiable either. Linley, Lady Helen and the St. Jameses are all longtime friends, albeit with ever-changing and complicated relationships. Barbara Havers, however, is thrust upon Linley at the beginning of the first book. And Linley and Havers are possibly the most mismatched police partners in the annals of mysterydom--he is earl of Asherton, dapper, sophisticated, a by-the-book investigator often hampered by the presence of a quick temper and the assumptions of his class. Havers is his working-class counterpart--often sullen and defensive; angered rather than impressed by any display of privilege or wealth, Havers lives on a diet of salt and vinegar crisps, watermelon Pop-Tarts and trashy novels. The subsequent clashes and collisions between the two personalities make very clear where the cracks are, where the emotional walls will sustain and where they will not.

Add to that St. James, who often seems a bit more on the ball than either Linley or Havers, along with the fallout from the two less-than-traditional female romantic leads, and you have a thoroughly modern mystery.

“I was very lucky when the first one was rejected,” says George of her first mystery novel, “because the editor explained to me why. I had written a very Agatha Christie-esque book and she said that wasn’t the way it was done.

“The modern crime novel,” she explains, “doesn’t have the detective call everyone into the library. It must deal with more topical crimes and the motives must be more psychological because the things you kill for are different now. Things like getting rid of a spouse who won’t divorce you, or hiding an illegitimate child, or blackmail over a family scandal--those are no longer realistic motivations.”

In a stunningly tidy bookcase-lined office, George attempts for a moment to convince her long-haired dachshund, Titch (the English slang for “little bit”), not to chew a hole in his dog bed, then turns her attention back to her descent into professional killing.

A Former Teacher Who Had a Novel in Her

A former English teacher, George had taught many courses in the mystery novel, deciding along the way that it was something she could do. And she knew at once it would be a British mystery novel, making the task at once easier and more difficult.

“I’ve always had a great passion for England, I suppose because my background was English literature. I had traveled in England quite a bit,” she says, “and the landscape is just so evocative for me. It brings forth twists in plot that Orange County certainly doesn’t.”

It took her two years and three rewrites to bring “A Great Deliverance” to print. After it’s highly acclaimed debut, it was just a question of what happens next.

Or rather where.

“The landscape is so important to my books,” she says. “Both the geographic landscape, and the emotional landscape of my characters. I often decide upon the place before I figure out the crime. For this last one, I went on the recommendation of a friend who had been saying for years, ‘You have to set a book in the Peak district.’ And as soon as I got there, I knew he was right.”

After she had finished her first draft, her editor offered another unsolicited suggestion.

“She said she liked it, but that somehow she saw two bodies,” George says, with a laugh. “Which really intrigued me because I had never done anything like that. So I had to rewrite the whole thing. But it was a much better story.”

George is not shy about giving credit where credit is due--every novel has an extensive acknowledgments page thanking anyone who provided research, information or insight, the latest including thanks to her London editor for accompanying her to local sex shops and a dominatrix who agreed to be interviewed.

Sex is never ever ignored in an Elizabeth George novel. Motive, red herring, progression of romance, relief from unhappiness, simple obsession, sex appears in all its myriad methods and manifestations. As do most symptoms of the human condition. George’s main coterie of characters have dealt with real-life issues, including the death of a parent, the failing of a parent, a brother’s death, a brother’s addiction, a sister’s postpartum depression, miscarriage and physical disability, as well as two separate sets of courtship and marriage.

“I always knew I would keep up with these characters,” she says. “I try never to shut any doors on them. That’s what I used to tell my students--open doors for your characters, don’t shut them. And all of them have families, these wonderful complex families, some of which haven’t even made it onto the page yet.”

And some were there before the first novel was published--her third book, “A Suitable Vengeance” (Bantam, 1991), was actually a rewrite of her second rejected attempt to get published. Taking place pre-Havers, it reveals much of the other characters’ back stories.

George says she has a general idea of where the series is going--”I know what’s going to happen to some of them, but not to all of them”--and it doesn’t sound like there will be a finale any time soon. Unlike Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George’s devotion to, and sympathy for, her characters seem limitless.

“I think because my novels are more than mysteries, I don’t feel trapped. I call these tapestry novels--they revolve around not only plot but character, setting, theme--the kinds of novels Sayers wrote.”

There are several obvious Sayersian similarities--both have as their main detective the nobleman-turned-sleuth, both created an ongoing, less-than-smooth serial courtship for same, both allow the ties of family and class to shade the thoughts and actions of their characters. But certainly George takes more chances than Sayers ever did--Lord Peter Whimsey never threw a temper tantrum or turned on a friend or let love cloud his judgment. George may love her characters, but she is ruthless about exposing their flaws.

“He’s on a bit of a slow-learning curve, isn’t he?” she says of Linley’s actions in the latest novel. “And he has that terrible temper. But then Barbara never helps much either, because she just cannot admit that her way is wrong.”

A Californian in New Scotland Yard

To keep herself honest, and accurate, about the local landscape, slang and personalities, George, who is divorced and has no children, lives about four months out of the year in a flat in South Kensington. But she says she’d never live there permanently because then it would become too familiar, less of an inspiration. So far, she says, no one has ever questioned the right of a Californian to inhabit New Scotland Yard.

“I’ve taken some heat from a few critics who have said that an earl would never be a policeman,” she says. “But there is actually an earl who is the chief superintendent of police. For which I am eternally grateful.”

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E-mail Mary McNamara at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.

Book Review: * Elizabeth George’s “In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner” is reviewed on E3.