In this essay I study class and gender issues in Elizabeth George’s A Great Deliverance. The two protagonists Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers come from opposite levels in society: he is an aristocrat and she is working class. Lynley is a well-mannered, elegant Earl, and he has all the advantages a man could wish for. Havers is his antithesis in everything, except that both of them are intelligent. While Lynley drives his new, shining Bentley, Havers comes in her old, rusty Mini. When Lynley has some problems in his love life, Havers strives to cope with her daily duties. She has to take care of her senile mother and her father, who suffers from a serious lung disease, and she also mourns the loss of her young brother, at the same time as she is trying to create a life of her own. She always fights against her bad conscience and guilt for being insufficient. Lynley does not have these problems which make their lives even more different. They are like a mirror of the English class society, which of course involves conflicts when they are working together. I examine the different problems they meet with when they work as partners, both concerning class and gender. Despite their differences they get along fairly well and they receive an insight into each other’s social situation. The fact that they are different might also be considered as something positive since they complement each other. Apparently, George works with great contrasts in her writing. She acknowledges the difficulties that appear when a man and a woman with different backgrounds work together. She is fascinated by what she calls the absurd class system, which is obvious in her novels. She does not try to glorify the upper class; instead she tries to show the drawbacks of the British class society. But George is also interested in the psychology of the characters, which to some extent goes against the dichotomies of class and gender. She is aware of the complexities of life, and she does not try to divide it into black and white. It is the interactions and the intrigues between characters of different class and gender that in the final analysis make the novels special, rather than just finding out who the murderer is.