โWhen the body of Alex Ballantyne is found in Barnes Pond the police are baffled. Who could want to kill the newly retired teacher? Investigations bring them to St Judeโs, the prestigious private school where Ballantyne taught, and to the discovery that Ballantyne had been blackmailing several of his colleagues. Sex. Money. Drugs. It seems that Ballantyne knew all about his victimsโ secrets, and they were prepared to pay to buy his silence. Is one of the St Judeโs staff the killer? And, if so, which one? DI Moriartyโs on the case and heโs soon discovering that nothing is quite as it seems.โ
So runs the blurb of โSchooled in Murderโ, a crime novel written by Ben Joseph, who is found dead in Barnes Pond the morning after giving a talk as part of the Barnes Book Festival.
DI Garibaldi and his team are shocked to discover that the writer has been killed in exactly the same place, and in exactly the same way, as the victim in โSchooled in Murderโ.
When they look at the novel they see more connections with real life. Ben Joseph is the pseudonym of Liam Allerton who, like the victim in his novel, is a retired teacher. And he taught at St Markโs, a school very similar to St Judeโs, the school in his novel.
But is that where the similarities end? How much of Allertonโs own life, and the lives of those he knew, had he put into his novel? And could the clue to the killerโs identity lie in its pages