Lord John series

Lord John series

First stand-alone print cover, Hell-Fire Club (1998)
Lord John and the Hellfire Club (1998) Lord John and the Private Matter (2003) Lord John and the Succubus (2003) Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (2007) Lord John and the Haunted Soldier (2007) The Custom of the Army (2010) The Scottish Prisoner (2011) Lord John and the Plague of Zombies (2011)
Author	Diana Gabaldon
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Historical mystery Gay literature
Publisher	Delacorte Press
Published	November 1998 – present
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback) Audiobook
Preceded by	Outlander series
Website	dianagabaldon.com

The Lord John series is a sequence of historical mystery novels and shorter works written by Diana Gabaldon that center on Lord John Grey, a recurring secondary character in the author's Outlander series. Secretly homosexual "in a time when that particular predilection could get one hanged," the character has been called "one of the most complex and interesting" of the hundreds of characters in Gabaldon's Outlander novels. Starting with the 1998 novella Lord John and the Hellfire Club, the Lord John spin-off series currently consists of five novellas and three novels.

Gabaldon introduced Grey in the second Outlander novel Dragonfly in Amber (1992) as a sixteen-year-old English soldier who chances upon Jamie and Claire Fraser on the eve of the Battle of Prestonpans. The character returned in Voyager (1993) and Drums of Autumn (1996). When Gabaldon was invited to write a short story for the 1998 British anthology Past Poisons: An Ellis Peters Memorial Anthology of Historical Crime, she was interested in the challenge of writing a shorter work but hesitant to use any of the main characters from the Outlander series for fear of creating "a stumbling block in the growth of the next novel." The Lord Grey character came to mind.

"Lord John Grey is an important character in the Outlander series, but he isn’t onstage all the time. And when he isn’t … well, plainly he’s off leading his life and having adventures elsewhere, and I could write about any of those adventures without causing complications for future novels. Beyond that obvious advantage, Lord John is a fascinating character. He’s what I call a 'mushroom' — one of those unplanned people who pops up out of nowhere and walks off with any scene he’s in — and he talks to me easily (and wittily). He’s also a gay man, in a time when to be homosexual was a capital offense, and Lord John has more than most to lose by discovery. He belongs to a noble family, he’s an officer in His Majesty’s Army, and loves both his family and his regiment; to have his private life discovered would damage — if not destroy — both. Consequently, he lives constantly with conflict, which makes him both deeply entertaining and easy to write about."