H. R. F. Keating was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, in 1926. He went to Merchant Taylors, leaving early to work in the engineering department of the BBC. After a period of service in the army, which he describes as ‘totally undistinguished’, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a scholar in modern languages. He was also the crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years. His first novel about Inspector Ghote, The Perfect Murder, won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers Association and an Edgar Allen Poe Special Award. He lived in London with his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell, until his death in 2011, aged 84.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Inspector Ghote Series
The Perfect Murder (1964)
Inspector Ghote’s Good Crusade (1966)
Inspector Ghote Caught in Meshes (1967)
Inspector Ghote Hunts a Peacock (1968)
Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker (1969)
Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg (1970)
Inspector Ghote Goes by Train (1971)
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart (1972)
Bats Fly Up for Inspector Ghote (1974)
The Sheriff of Bombay (1984)
Filmi, Filmi ,Inspector Ghote (1976)
Inspector Ghote Draws a Line (1979)
The Murder of the Maharajah (1980)
Under a Monsoon Cloud (1986)
The Body in the Billiard Room (1987)
Dead on Time (1988)
The Iciest Sin (1990)
Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes (1989)
Cheating Death (1992)
Doing Wrong (1993)
Asking Questions (1996)
Bribery, Corruption Also (1999)
Breaking and Entering (2000)
Inspector Ghote’s First Case (2008)
A Small Case for Inspector Ghote? (2009)
Harriet Martens Series
The Hard Detective (2000)
A Detective in Love (2001)
A Detective Under Fire (2002)
The Dreaming Detective (2003)
A Detective at Death’s Door (2004)
One Man and His Bomb (2006)
Rules, Regs and Rotten Eggs (2007)
Other novels
Death and the Visiting Firemen (1959)
Zen There Was Murder (1960)
A Rush On the Ultimate (1961)
The Dog It Was That Died (1962)
Death of a Fat God (1963)
Is Skin-Deep, Is Fatal (1965)
The Strong Man (1971)
The Underside (1974)
Murder Must Appetize (1975)
A Remarkable Case of Burglary (1975)
Murder by Death (1976) (screenplay by Neil Simon)
A Long Walk to Wimbledon (1978)
The Governess (1983)
Mrs. Craggs: Crimes Cleaned Up (1985)
The Man of Gold (1985) (writing as Evelyn Hervey)
Into the Valley of Death (1986)
The Rich Detective (1993)
The Good Detective (1995)
The Soft Detective (1997)
The Bad Detective (1999)
Jack the Lady Killer (1999)
Collections
In Kensington Gardens Once… (1997)
Non-fiction
Sherlock Holmes, the Man and His World (1979)
Great Crimes (1982)
Writing Crime Fiction (1986)
Crime and Mystery: the 100 Best Books (1987)
The Bedside Companion to Crime (1989)
