The fifth in the Rafferty and Llewellyn detective series Even if Barstaple was a particularly tyrannical office manager, did he really deserve to be poisoned? And isn't a decent police inquiry the least he deserves? But DI Rafferty has got other things on his mind . . . Bizarre, quirky and ingenious, Absolute Poison injects a dose of skull and crossbones into the office world of nine to five.
Hi, Welcome!
I've had eighteen novels published - sixteen crime, one historical and one romance. I've been plucked from slush piles twice: once by Robert Hale, and once by Macmillan, who took my very first mystery novel, Dead Before Morning, and published it in 1993. They sold it in turn to St Martin's Press in the US and thence on to Worldwide for softcover publication. Not bad for a writer who had endured six long years of rejections for her first six novels. Admittedly, they had been romances: clearly not my metier!
My eighteenth novel, Deadly Reunion, came out in the UK in February 2011, it'll be out on 1st June in the States. In this one, Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty is barely back from his honeymoon before he has two unpleasant surprises. Not only has he another murder investigation - a poisoning courtesy of a school reunion, he also has four new lodgers, courtesy of his Ma, Kitty Rafferty. Ma is organising her own reunion and since getting on the internet, the number of Rafferty and Kelly family attendees has grown, like Topsy. In his murder investigation, Rafferty has to go back in time to learn of all the likely motives of the victim's fellow reunees. But it is only when he is reconciled to his unwanted lodgers, that Rafferty finds the answers to his most important questions. Deadly Reunion is the fourteenth in my Rafferty & Llewellyn humorous crime series.
I've also a new ebook out, Death Line, the third ebook,in my Rafferty series, available from amaxon's kindle, iPad, iPhone, iBookstore, nook, kobo, android, and God knows where else. Price 99c for a limited period only. In this one, Jasper Moon, internationally renowned 'seer to the stars', had signally failed to foresee his own future. He is found dead on his consulting-room floor, his skull crushed with a crystal ball and, all, around him, his office in chaos.
Meanwhile, Ma Rafferty goes in for a bit of star gazing herself. She sees a good Catholic girl with child-bearing hips in Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty's future. Rafferty hopes a cunning plan will help him avoid her machinations. During their murder investigations, Inspector Rafferty and Sergeant Llewellyn gradually discover connections between Moon and others in the small Essex town of Elmhurst. But why is it that all of Rafferty's suspects have seemingly unbreakable alibis?
I've just started to prepare The Hanging Tree, the fourth in my Rafferty series, for epublication. I hope to have it available in the usual places by the middle of April.
