Playing for the Ashes
- Published
- 1 January 1994
- Pages
- 696
- ISBN-13
- 9780553905472
- Type
- novel
About this book
Playing for the Ashes (1994) sits between Missing Joseph and In the Presence of the Enemy as the seventh book, a substantial 696 pages, continuing George's literary, character-saturated approach to British crime.
Key facts about Playing for the Ashes
Playing for the Ashes is a novel by Elizabeth George. Readers have had it since 1994. It runs to 696 pages.
Our list holds 2 editions of Playing for the Ashes. Since each edition has its own ISBN, search for 9780553905472 to find the main one.
Playing for the Ashes is book 7 of 22 in the Inspector Lynley series. The series has 22 published books. However, the series starts with A Great Deliverance (1988). A Slowly Dying Cause is the latest book in the series with a full release date, out on 23 September 2025.
Additionally, Elizabeth George writes Whidbey Island as a separate series. Those series sit on our police procedural and young adult mystery shelves. Meanwhile, A Slowly Dying Cause is the latest published Elizabeth George book on file, from 23 September 2025.
About Elizabeth George
Elizabeth George is an American author best known for the Inspector Thomas Lynley series of British crime novels, an unusual case of an American writer working almost entirely within English settings and class dynamics. See every Elizabeth George book in order.
Its place in Inspector Lynley
Playing for the Ashes is book 7 in the Inspector Lynley series. It follows Missing Joseph. It is followed by In the Presence of the Enemy. See the full Inspector Lynley reading order.
Thomas Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton, is a Scotland Yard detective who happens to be minor aristocracy — a premise Elizabeth George uses to explore British class friction from the inside, especially through his prickly, working-class partner DS Barbara Havers, whose resentment of and eventual loyalty to Lynley is one of the great slow-burn partnerships in crime fiction. George, an American writing English detective fiction with unusual authority, builds each novel as a dense, doorstop-length literary mystery…
Editions
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9780593036785
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9780553905472