Deadly Reunion (Rafferty and Llewellyn Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Geraldine Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2011 | Series: Rafferty and Llewellyn Mysteries

The brand-new Rafferty and Llewellyn Mystery - Loves, labours, losses and not to mention a spattering of the occult are all part of an education at the prestigious Griffin School, but when a reunion culminates in the death of a high profile former student, DI Joseph Rafferty and his ever erudite partner, Sergeant Dafyd Llewellyn, are called in to unearth the truth behind the school’s picturesque facade.

Editorial Reviews

Review

DI Joseph Rafferty and Sergeant Dafyd Llewellyn have a new case that takes them to prestigious Griffin School, where an alumnus has been found dead at a class reunion. The victim is a well-known athlete, and his classmates, all suspects, include a Home Office official. As the detectives work to solve the crime, they must deal with their budget-obsessed superintendent and with Rafferty's mother, who is planning a big family reunion. This well-constructed procedural effectively blends humorous details of Rafferty's family life into an engaging case in a solid series appealing to both procedural and cozy fans. --Booklist, May 1, 2011

Rafferty and Llewellyn (Death Dance, 2010, etc.) threaten to bust the Elmhurst CID's budget as they comb the country for clues to the murder of a former rugby star. Adam Ainsley had been quite the big man on campus at his prestigious private school. So it should be a rare treat that he shows up at the Griffin School's annual reunion. Only somebody treats him to a dose of hemlock, and DI Joe Rafferty has the perfect excuse to escape Cyrus, Wendy, Angel and Louis, the distant American cousins his ma has quartered with him and his new wife Abra as part of an international gathering of the Rafferty clan. To his partner DS Dafyd Llewellyn's dismay, Rafferty runs up travel expenses galore, driving to Suffolk to interview the deceased's parents and to Somerset to speak to his ex-wives. He makes multiple junkets to London to see ex-classmates Giles Harmsworth, Sebastian Kennedy and Simon Fairweather. (His only regret is that Gary Sadiq is in London, too, saving his boss, Supt. Bradley, from paying for a trip to Sadiq's native India.) In Cambridge, fellow alum Victoria Watson has little enough to say, but a visit to Alice Douglas in Norwich turns up an unexpected daughter who's just the right age to have been the legacy of one of the many conquests of Adam's school days. As the mileage accumulates, Rafferty seems to be making no headway in figuring out who took Ainsley out of the scrum. And by leaving Abra alone with voluble Cyrus, Joe risks a second reunion-centered murder a lot closer to home. Readers are liable to find themselves on the side of Rafferty's despised super: It just takes him too darn long to solve this one. -- Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2011

About the Author

Evans has had a variety of jobs and spent several years helping to run a vehicle-repair workshop. There she tackled tax returns, the intricacies of which she believes were an excellent apprenticeship for the brain-teasing work necessary in writing a whodunnit.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers (June 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0727880160
• ISBN-13: 978-0727880161
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,018,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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.