Villager: Millet buries his beloved Rafferty, but not without one more mystery to solve

Millett was not sure he would ever write a ninth Rafferty mystery, much less one that killed off his favorite detective. The decision, he said, did not come without a sense of loss.

The ninth and final Minnesota mystery, in which Shadwell Rafferty, with the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, may have solved his own murder

Millett was not sure he would ever write a ninth Rafferty mystery, much less one that killed off his favorite detective. The decision, he said, did not come without a sense of loss. “As a writer, you develop a fondness for your characters,” he said. “But ending the series with Rafferty’s death just seemed natural. There’s a time and a place for everything. When you get to my age (74), you’re intensely aware of that. And the book just seemed a good way to bring it all to an end.”

“I hope readers take away from the (Rafferty) series a sense of adventure and a little history of what Minnesota and the Twin Cities were like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” Millett said. “I’ve never ventured far from Minnesota and Saint Paul. I’m a Minnesotan to the core. So I wanted to keep things here and explore a lot of great Minnesota tales. Ultimately, I’ve tried to write books with solid characters and some humor.”

Article at MyVillager.