Roderic Jeffries / Roderic Graeme

Roderic Jeffries is British detective fiction author who also writes as Graham Hastings, Roderic Graeme, Jeffrey Ashford, and Peter Alding. Jeffries is descended from Quaker William Penn, who famously gave his name to the newly found colony of Pennsylvania. His father was the popular detective thriller writer Graham Montague Jeffries of the “Blackshirt” series of novels fame. Jeffries was born in 1926 London, and attended Harrow View House Preparatory School, before proceeding to University of Southampton Department of Navigation. He would go on to become a sailor, joining the New Zealand Shipping Company. The company sailed to New Zealand and Australia though the young Jeffries soon found a job with Union Castle Company, as he wanted to see other parts of the world. Upon his return to England in the middle of the century, he became a member of the Honorable Society of Gray’s Inn while he was reading for the Bar. He made it into the Bar in 1953 but had a terrible time as jurist losing all seven of his cases, severely denting his confidence as a lawyer. He decided the law was not for him and quit to pursue a career in writing and published his first novel in 1950.