Roderic Jeffries was born in London in 1926 and went to sea in 1943. Six years later he left that trade and became a lawyer. But quickly fiction stole him away from the Bar. Since 1951, he has written over one hundred and sixty novels under his own name and several other pseudonyms. He began his career by writing books featuring his father’s character, Blackshirt, a popular detective whose adventures have appeared in print for many decades. In time Jeffries branched out and began to write a variety of mystery novels under his own name and several pen names, including Peter Alding and Jeffrey Ashford.
However, his most popular character is Inspector Enrique Alvarez of the Spanish island resort of Mallorca, “a middle-aged man with a bit of a middle-aged spread [who] takes a diligent, unhurried approach to solving crime,” according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. That series is thirty-six books strong with its June, 2012 addition, Murdered by Nature. Booklist called the Alvarez books a “delightful and entertaining series that never seems to lose a step.” (more…)