Peter Lovesey

Mad Hatter’s Holiday

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

Shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Awards, 1973

The Victorian entertainment chosen for Cribb’s next case was the seaside. Brighton was an obvious choice for me, as it was my first sight of the sea after the war. Albert Moscrop, an obsessive voyeur, wanders the sea front in 1882 using his telescope. The beautiful Zena Prothero is particularly fascinating to watch.

Then the whole of Brighton is horrified by the discovery of a murder. The local police need the help of Scotland Yard, so Cribb and Thackeray get a chance of some sea air.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1973
UK Paperback: Panther, 1974
US Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1973
US Paperback: Penguin, 1981
Reissued in the US in June, 2009, by Soho Press

“A minor gem, catching to perfection the social atmospherics of Victorian Brighton and at the same time telling an ingenious story of murder and discovery.”
Publishers Weekly

“His best yet.”
HRF Keating, The Times

“Positively, this is the best Lovesey to date.”
Anthony Price, Oxford Mail

This is easily the best story Mr Lovesey has written.”
FE Pardoe, Birmingham Post

“The sleuthing is neat and satisfying: in the meantime, Victorian pleasures, permitted and illicit, are rendered up with gusto.”
Matthew Coady, The Guardian

Bertie And The Tinman

A Bertie, Prince of Wales, mystery

Listed in the Hatchards Top 100 Crime Novels

It is 1886 and the greatest of all jockeys, Fed Archer, has put his gun to his head and shot himself. An inquest is arranged with indecent haste. His mind was unhinged by typhoid, say the jury, despite conflicting evidence.

The Prince is suspicious. He admired Archer. He knows the Turf better than anyone on that jury and he has personal experience of typhoid. When he learns that Archer’s last words were, “Are they coming?”
he decides on action. He will turn his unique talents to solving the mystery and tell us in his inimitable fashion how he does it.

UK Publisher: The Bodley Head, 1987 ISBN 0-370-31113-2
US Publisher: Mysterious Press, 1988 ISBN 0-89296-196-1
UK Paperback: Arrow, 1988 ISBN 0-09-956500-5
US Paperback: Mysterious Press, 1988

“Hugely entertaining … It’s Dick Francis by gaslight.”
Peter Grosvenor, Daily Express

“Thank heavens for Peter Lovesey, who has produced another accomplished novel.”
Joan Smith, London Evening Standard

“Lovesey proved himself the world’s foremost concocter of latter-day Victoriana in his series of mysteries built around Sergeant Cribb … The rueful, candid voice he gives to the fleshy prince rings true, the details of the horse-racing and music-hall worlds are vivid, and much of the tale is sweetly funny.”
William A Henry III, Time

“One doesn’t wish to put that nice Sergeant Cribb out of a job: but we can’t wait to go out on another case with dear Bertie.”
Marilyn Stasio, Philadelphia Inquirer

Bertie And The Seven Bodies

A Bertie, Prince of Wales, mystery

In 1890 twelve guests gather at Desborough Hall for a week’s shooting party hosted by the beautiful Lady Amelia Hammond. Months of planning have left nothing to chance, for the main guests are the Prince and Princess of Wales. But events take a sinister turn when the vivacious Queenie Chimes collapses face down in the chef’s lovingly created bombe-glacée. More deaths follow and clues planted on the bodies point shockingly to a final tally of seven, one for each day of the week. Bertie is impelled to investigate.

Written in the tradition of the “golden age” detective story, the book was intended as a homage to Agatha Christie in the year of her centenary.

UK Publisher: Century, 1990 ISBN 0-7126-3471-1
US Publisher: Mysterious Press, 1990 ISBN 0-89296-399-9
UK Paperback: Arrow, 1991 ISBN 0-09-969620-7
US Paperback: Mysterious Press, 1991 ISBN 0-445-40858-8
Felony & Mayhem 2006 ISBN 1-933397-36-5

“This is a delightful and amusing period piece, particularly in the interplay between the libidinous Bertie and his rather more intelligent wife, Alexandra, who stoically endures his inclination to dally with anything in skirts.”
Jay Iliff, Sunday Express

“High-class Victorian entertainment written with wit.”
Marcel Berlins, The Times

“Seamlessly plotted, populated with a dynamic cast, and often howlingly funny.”
Les Roberts, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Abracadaver

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

After wobbling and boxing, the music hall suggested itself as another Victorian entertainment to use as a background. Dangerous and humiliating accidents are happening in the halls and the police investigate. Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray sense a sinister presence behind the incidents just as the action turns to murder. The music hall scenes are based on the real late-Victorian halls, rather different from modern perceptions.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1972
UK Paperback: Panther, 1974
US Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1972
US paperback: Dell, 1974
Latest UK paperback: Sphere, 2018
Reissued in the US in June, 2009, by Soho Press

“Music hall’s heyday lovingly recalled as Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray cope with limelit poisoning and Victorian permissiveness … thoroughly entertaining.”
Matthew Coady, The Guardian

“Sinister fun in splendidly atmospheric setting.”
Francis Goff, Sunday Telegraph

It’s a tangled business, both evil and intricate. Every police move seems frustrated by almost superhuman cunning until Cribb’s trap nails the murderer and ends a hunt as spectacular as it has been fairly marked with clues. Very much Grade A.”
John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“Dangerous, humiliating practical jokes are played on various music-hall artists: there is a nice murder to be found with a nice unexpected murderer at the denouement.”
Edmund Crispin, Sunday Times

For a delightful, offbeat offering in the mystery field try Peter Lovesey’s
Abracadaver.”
Jean M White, San Francisco Examiner

“Lovesey has a special flair for re-creating Victorian England with to-the-manner-born wit. I love Lovesey.”
Saturday Review

The Reaper

Barry Award shortlist, 2000
Jury selection: Prix du Roman d’Aventures, 2004

The bishop’s body lies at the bottom of a quarry. In his car are a suicide note, a copy of Men Only and a Bible underlined at the text ‘… hath devoured thy living with harlots’. His last call, the police discover, was to one Madame Swish.

Devoured by guilt? Or did someone help the bishop move closer to the Lord? He was last seen alive by Otis Joy, the charming young rector of the Wiltshire village of Foxford. Adored by the ladies in his congregation, who fill his pews and collection plates each Sunday, the Reverend Joy had become less popular with the bishop, who had discovered irregularities in the church accounts.

The bishop’s demise is only the first of a series of sudden deaths in Foxford.

UK Publisher: Little, Brown, 2000 ISBN 0-316-85419-0
US Publisher: Soho Press, 2000 ISBN 1-56947-227-0
UK Paperback: Time Warner, 2001 ISBN 0-7515-3039-5
Latest UK Paperback: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553598

“Otis is a wonderful creation: self-effacing, pious, attractive, dedicated to his parishioners, devoted to the church. He suffers from vocation run wild: he needs adulation and respect the way a junkie needs a fix. And, like a junkie, he will commit any crime to ensure he receives it. … The plotting is devilish, the writing a pleasure.”
Donna Leon, The Sunday Times

“… it features one of the finest creations in crime fiction – the unforgettable Otis Joy, the young and charming rector of Foxford. … Lovesey tells an almost Trollopian tale, satisfyingly complex and suspenseful but with wonderfully amusing insights into English village life.”
Carla McKay, Daily Mail

“The flavour here is part Patricia Highsmith in her Ripley series and part Ealing comedy, those ’50s British movies, such as ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ that brilliantly mixed the genial and the macabre. It’s a hard act to pull off – tone is everything – and Lovesey is a master practitioner.”
Washington Post Book World

“If you’ve never read any of his 20-plus books this wickedly clever, beautifully written story of a murderous clergyman who earns our sympathy while dramatically whittling down his flock should make you an instant convert.”
Chicago Tribune

“Lovesey is such a master of black humor and macabre plot twists that the attitudes of Foxford’s parishioners are no more predictable than Otis’s outrageous behaviour. By taking care to show us what a pious and compassionate priest the vicar is, Lovesey challenges us to keep our values screwed on tight. In this author’s unorthodox church, there must be a pew for Patricia Highsmith.”
Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review