Elizabeth George

Fat, unpretty Roberta Teys, 19, has been found in her Sunday dress, axe in her lap, in the old stone barn in the tiny English village of Keldale, with her father's headless corpse nearby. Her only words before she goes utterly silent for the next few weeks are "I did it. And I'm not sorry." Elizabeth George introduces her Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, eighth Earl of Asherton, and his good friend Simon Allcourt-St. James, an independent forensic scientist. Lynley (something of a literary descendant of Lord Peter Wimsey) has been partnered with Sgt. Barbara Havers, an unhappy, class-sensitive working class woman who has failed to make detective before, as well as rubbed most other men in the department the wrong way. The ability of the veteran "toff" and the touchy sergeant to get along and work together is part of the interest in the first few books of the series. George's excellent mysteries have the added virtue of skillfully reflecting the issues of the case in the lives of her heroes (and their significant others). An auspicious debut for a series that would go on to greater things.