Down Among the Dead Men

Following Dead Before Morning, the second Inspector Rafferty/Sergeant Llewellyn mystery successfully brings the English duo together again when a woman is found suffocated in an Essex field. Barbara Longman, tireless worker for ecological causes and a good mother, is not your average murder victim. So, at first, Rafferty links her death to unsolved serial killings in a neighboring district. But then clues begin to point towards one of her family-or at least someone with intimate details about her personal life. Rafferty, nicknamed the British Columbo, and his more educated sidekick Llewellyn closely question the prominent family with which Longman lived. Interspersed with Rafferty's keen musings and tentative deductions about the case is the growing connection between him and his sergeant as Llewellyn begins to get serious about Rafferty's cousin, whom he is dating. (Dec.)