In the book "Lady" Helen's death is very different from the series. spoilers**************** In
"With No One As Witness" a pregnant Helen & Deborah St. James are returning home from shopping for baby stuff. Tommy receives a phone call from the killer & believes Helen is in danger so he calls Helen after some chit chat asks to speak to Deborah and asks her to take Helen straight home. Deborah drops Helen in front of the house while she parks the car. When she gets to Lynley's house Helen is unresponsive lying on the front steps, shot in the chest. She never regains consciousness and is brain dead. Lynley makes the decision to pull the life support. In the end it's a young black boy named Joel Campbell who is arrested for the murder, but in the sequel What Came Before he shot her, we find out not the kid but his partner shot Helen, but the kid seems to be taking the fall. I hope sometime in the future the person who really shot Helen is brought to justice.

How does she die?????? I haven't gotten that far on the dvds, and don't know if I can get the entire series. Thanks.

That's interesting. Do you happen to know the name of the reviewer? He/she and I must have been watching different series. I know tastes differ, but I have always found Parker's acting to be outstanding, in this series, in films and on stage. I think 'turgid' might have meant that the character was well-mannered, didn't sprinkle his speech with four-letter words and didn't tear around shouting at the top of his voice and firing a gun at anything that moved. That might be considered 'uncool' (or turgid)by today's TV standards.

Lesley Vickerage was such an awful actress that I was actually glad to see her leave the mystery series. The only worse actor in the series is Nathaniel Parker, whom a reviewer in a British newspaper calls 'Television's most turgid detective.'

She dies in the book "With no one as witness", (that I just red) but that book has nothing to do with the episode in question. I guess they just wanted to kill her off from the series or something.

you can also go the Elizabeth George's website, whre there is a synopsis of all the novels in the order in which they were written. Don't expect the tv shows to follow the time line

Thank you Halavana.

The book is With No One As Witness, continued in What Came Before He Shot Her.

OK. I just read somewhere else that evidently Helen dies in the books as well. So I guess I answered my own question. Still, if anyone knows in which book it is that she dies, please let me know. Thanks.