Herring in the Smoke - L C Tyler

Roger Norton Vane is dead. After twenty years of wild speculation following his disappearance, his death is to be made official and somebody will inherit his accumulated wealth. Ethelred Tressider, crime writer and Vane’s biographer, attends the memorial service, but he doesn’t expect to find himself talking to Vane himself, apparently returned from the dead. Chaos ensues and it becomes clear that many people wish the man calling himself Vane had stayed dead, and that his anecdotes had died with him ..

With dubious help from his redoubtable literary agent Elsie Thirkettle, Ethelred is drawn into an increasingly bloody mystery where all that’s clear is that someone has done a serious hatchet job on Vane.