Inspector Joseph Rafferty has been a widower for a long time and fed up with his domineering mother setting him up on dates, he decides to take matters into his own hands by joining a dating agency for middle class professionals, 'Made in Heaven'. Rafferty knows he'd never live it down in both his personal and professional lives if anyone found out, so he decides to register under an alias. He negotiates with his estate agent cousin who has a basic facial similarity to him and who for a consideration will lend him his driving license, mobile phone, Italian suit and most importantly his name, 'Nigel Blythe'.

As 'Nigel', Rafferty attends two 'Get to Know You' parties and on each occasion he meets a young woman he'd like to get to know better. Unfortunately, neither of them is available for long as their mutilated bodies are found a few days later. In both cases, the last known person to have been seen with them is 'Nigel Blythe'.

It's not long before Rafferty is given the case and asked to check out 'Nigel Blythe' as everyone reports something was fishy about him. Rafferty keeps up the pretence of not knowing who Nigel is, even to the extent of pretending not to know his own cousin at an official interview. He reasons that he is in the best place to solve the crimes by having inside knowledge. He is able to delegate a lot of work to his sergeant, Dafyd Llewellyn, recently returned from honeymoon though Llewellyn is concerned by his superior's drastic change in appearance. Rafferty has to think extremely hard to solve the murders, clear his cousin's name and save himself from ridicule or much, much worse.

I thoroughly enjoyed DYING FOR YOU the sixth in the Rafferty and Llewellyn series. The story is told from Rafferty's viewpoint and he injects a lot of humour in his narrative. He's got himself in an impossible situation and one wonders what can go wrong next. This is the first one I've read and this story focussed on Rafferty with Llewellyn a bit on the sidelines which I suspect is unusual from some of the discussions they refer to in this book. The who-dunnit aspect is suitably difficult, I didn't have any idea in fact, though there were some small clues dropped here and there. I savoured this book and I'm keen to read the rest in the series as soon as possible.

Karen Meek, England
October 2004