Rayner, Claire

(British, 1931– )

Claire Rayner was born and educated in London, then trained and worked as a nurse before starting her writing career. She is also well-known as a television agony aunt. Her fiction includes historical sagas and medical thrillers. Her style is straightforward, pacy, and narrative-driven and her books include much authentic background detail. Try Jubilee (1987), the first volume of The Poppy Chronicles, a family saga spanning the twentieth century. In London Lodgings (1994) the heroine opens a lodging-house in Victorian London, and her story continues in Paying Guests (1995). Second Opinion (1995) is typical of Claire Rayner's medical murder mysteries, in which a resident pathologist, the female Dr George Barnabas, acts as sleuth when there is a series of murders in her hospital.

Patricia Cornwell, Harry Bowling, Maisie Mosco  SA