The Alkan Murder: 14 (Julius Falconer Series) - Softcover

The wealthy and reclusive Harry Quirke, misanthropist and student of the piano works of Alkan, is stabbed to death in his country house outside Tadcaster. Only one of the obvious suspects seems to have much of a motive: his alibi is shaky, it is true, but there is no proof of his involvement. DI Moat and his assistant DS Stockwell follow one false lead after another in an exasperating investigation that seems to be getting nowhere: a gypsy caravan, an old murder in Kansas, the hurried will of a dying man, a golf-course green and an unfinished catalogue of Alkan's works - none of it seems to make sense. Finally, the murderer makes the smallest of slips, and the penny drops - but it's a close thing!

Member of an ancient but completely undistinguished York family, by chance born and brought up in the Midlands, Julius Falconer studied abroad before working as a translator back in the UK. Thinking that he could earn more as a teacher, to fund his extravagant life-style, he took a PGCE at Leeds University and duly turned to teaching. He slaved away at the chalk-face for twenty-six stirring years in both Cornwall and Scotland before retiring to grow cabbages in Yorkshire, where he still lives - when he's not occupying a remote cottage in central France. His wife of thirty-three years unfortunately died in 2000. He has one daughter, married. In 2008, looking to fill his new-found leisure profitably(?), he started to write detective novels and is still happily scribbling away eighteen books later. Go to www.juliusfalconer.com for further exciting details.