Arthur Conan Doyle had a brief flirtation with the United States in his first Sherlock Holmes' novel, "A Study in Scarlet," but afterward, the Scottish physician seldom strayed from the foggy streets and verdant countryside of England as settings for his mysteries.

Most of his British successors follow the same path. From Ian Rankin in Scotland, John Harvey in Nottingham and Peter Robinson in Yorkshire, these writers stay close to home.

Not so their American cousins, however. Some of the most popular British crime novels these days are being written by Yanks.

Inspector Linley, the aristocratic London police detective, and his lower-class assistant, Barbara Havers, are the creations of Elizabeth George, who was born in nearby Warren, Ohio, and grew up in Orange County, Calif.

Her 14 published titles in the series (the 15th, "Careless in Red," will be released in May) have been best sellers in the United States and Great Britain, where the BBC produces the television versions.

According to George's British publisher, Hodder & Stoughton Limited, sales of the Linley books now number approximately 300,000, major best sellers by English standards.

Martha Grimes first encountered foggy days in her native Pittsburgh and a green countryside around Deep Creek, Md., before she started her Richard Jury series about a Scotland Yard sleuth. Many of the titles in the 20-book set are named for English pubs.

Ian Rutledge is a shell-shocked British Army officer back from World War I, investigating murders all over Old Blighty in a crime series written by Charles Todd that now numbers 11 with its latest installment, "The Pale Horse," in December.

Charles Todd is the moniker of a mother-son writing team, Caroline and Charles, who are as American as Dashiell Hammett.

In spite of its small murder rate and tighter restrictions on civil rights, Britain is the ancestral home of the mystery and crime genre in fiction. Not only are American writers appropriating and replicating the English character of that genre, they're succeeding at it.

This case has two elements: How do the Yanks do it, and how do the Brits feel about these poachers on their territory?

Elizabeth George, 59, who has cousins in the Pittsburgh area, first visited England during those Swinging London days of 1966, and the memories stayed with her.

"At that time when I first began to write more seriously -- and that was in high school -- I was very interested in both British history and British pop culture," said George, who lives outside Seattle.

"At that time [the mid-1960s] the things that really influenced my awareness of pop culture were all British," she added, mentioning not only the Beatles and other rock groups, but also a handful of young actors such as Michael Caine and Julie Christie who captured her attention.

"My awareness of everything that constituted British culture was really heightened at that point, and I was quite taken with it," said George.

While pursuing a teaching career in Southern California, she made several more visits to the British Isles before deciding in 1983 to write books. George knew what setting she wanted to use, then searched for the right formula.

"I realized the crime novel did a number of things for me that were real helpful [as a new writer]. It provided me with a natural structure, and on that structure, I could hang as little or as much as I choose," she said.

"And the structure demystified writing, took the scariness away from it. What I knew had to be in the book were the crime and the investigation. Over the years I began experimenting with it and hanging more and more on that structure."

Her latest Linleys -- "With No One as Witness" and "What Came Before He Shot Her" -- loaded up the structure of the typical "police procedural" with emotional incidents in the private lives of her characters.

George keeps a "flat" in London and makes regular forays to the city and countryside to research her books. Now working on the 16th Linley, she recently toured New Forest, a parkland in Hampshire not far from Southampton.

"I continue to find England a very fascinating country," she said, "and it grows more so for me with every year, especially because of the European unification."

That development has opened up borders to most Europeans, making it easy for them to relocate, George said. "All of that movement now makes England, especially London, a much more interesting place."

Charles Todd began traveling in Britain as a young man. "I was fortunate enough in my youth to travel with and without my parents in Europe," he said. "I always felt England has so many fascinating areas, so it seemed like the best kind of place to use for a book's setting."

But it was his mother who pressed the idea of joint authorship, said Todd. "Carolina announced one day that we were going to write books, and I guess I agreed to it. It's all her fault."

Working long distance via e-mail as Todd traveled in his corporate consultant job, the pair wrote alternate chapters of their first book over a two-year period in the mid 1990s.

"We really did the first one as a lark," Todd said. "It was just happenstance the way things turned out. We came to enjoy developing characters and relationships."

That first effort became "A Test of Wills," published in 1996. No. 11, the newest, "A Pale Horse," appeared in December. The title refers to the large stylized figure of a horse in chalk on a hill near the Berkshire village of Uffington, believed to date to 1000 B.C.

"Our books reflect the memories we both have of our travels in England," said Todd.

To research the books, the team revisits the English sites with John Todd, Caroline's husband and Charles' father, doing the driving. Each book is set in a different locale.

"We're not locked into one place," said Todd. "Each time Rutledge goes to a new village or location. It brings a sense of place to our books."

The time period -- 1919 -- is also an important aspect of the series. Nearly a quarter of British men between 20 and 40 were killed in the war and thousands disabled. Though physically whole, Rutledge is haunted daily by his giving an order to execute a soldier for refusing to charge enemy lines after repeated massacres.

"Both Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings mentioned in their books on the 20th century that World War I had been the focal point that set in motion much of what we have had to deal with since," said Caroline. "And, it was great to see that those two agreed with us about the importance of that time."

The aftermath of war will continue to be a motif in the Rutledge series, she said.

"Most soldiers came home from the war damaged in some way. We realized that the one link to all wars and all soldiers was post traumatic stress disorder," said Caroline, explaining why their hero is psychologically damaged.

As for the British themselves, both George and the Todds believe they've been accepted despite their American heritage.

"I don't think the English reader worries about things like that as long as they enjoy the book," said Caroline. "I don't think they question our heritage as long as they enjoy the book. And, we've been told that sometimes the English think we're British."

George has what she considers the "imprimatur" of acceptance because her books have been filmed by the BBC.

"My books are taken as authentic," she said. "I've been told that a lot, either by expatriates or people in England. The BBC's willingness to make them into films is really, for me, validation of my authenticity."

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Feb. 26, 2008) "A Study in Scarlet," Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel, was partially set in America. Another novel was incorrectly cited in this story about Americans who write British mysteries as originally published Feb. 24, 2008.