A celebration in Oxford for university tutor and bestselling author Jason Verdoot, attended by DCI St. Just and his fiancée Portia, is a night to remember . . . for all the wrong reasons.

University of Oxford tutor and bestselling author Jason Verdoodt has it all: acclaim, women, money . . . and an enemy or two. When he's found dead at the bottom of the stairs during a celebratory reception at St Rumwold's College, many wonder if seething jealousy of his literary success has turned someone's mind to murder.

Detective Chief Inspector Arthur St. Just becomes inescapably drawn into an investigation that takes him down the historic streets of Oxford and into the hallowed halls of its university. Alongside his fiancée, crime fiction writer Portia De'Ath, he uncovers several motives for murdering the celebrated but insufferable Jason - whose next novel may be a threat to many in his orbit - and no shortage of suspects who are nursing a grudge from the first novel. Has someone decided to write revenge into the plot?

Malliet, G. M.

Agatha Award-winning G.M. Malliet is the acclaimed author of two traditional mystery series and a standalone novel set in England. The first entry in the DCI St. Just series, Death of a Cozy Writer, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for Macavity and Anthony Awards. The Rev. Max Tudor series has been nominated for many awards as have several of her short stories appearing in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Strand. The Augusta Hawke mysteries, of which Invitation to a Killer is the second, are her first novels set in the U.S., where she and her husband now live.

www.gmmalliet.com