Peter Lovesey

Swing, Swing Together

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

Grand Prix de Littérature Policière Winner, 1985

After Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian bestseller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. The novel begins, however, with skinny-dipping (under another name) by some student teachers. By chance one of them finds herself a witness in a case of murder. The suspects? Three men in a boat.

When Cribb and Thackeray take to the river in pursuit, nobody will take them seriously. However, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1976
UK Paperback: Penguin, 1978
US Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1976
US Paperback: Penguin, 1978
Latest UK edition: Arrow, 1991
Latest US edition: Soho Press, June, 2010

“Here’s charm and delight. A puzzle postlude to
Three Men in a Boat.”
HRF Keating, The Times

“Thames-side summer scenes plus real who-and-why puzzle add up to period piece of engaging charm.”
Francis Goff, Sunday Telegraph

“Lovely flavour of the time … ‘Naked? Completely, darling. In the buff. It’s awfully good fun.’ And so it all is.”
George Duthie, The Scotsman

“The most light-hearted, but by no means the least compelling, of Lovesey’s books.”
Marcel Berlins, The Times

“A relaxed and easy-going book, complete with traditional mystery traditionally solved. Enlivening the proceedings is a pert and attractive young lady who knows exactly what she wants.”
Newgate Callendar, New York Times

The Circle

A Hen Mallin mystery

When Parcel Force driver Bob Naylor plucks up courage to join his local writers’ circle in Chichester, he is nervous. He’s not much of a reader, let alone a writer. He expects to meet people unlike himself, with names like Maurice, Amelia, Zach and Thomasine – and he finds them. But while he is prepared for some naked ambition, he doesn’t know it will include murder.

Being catapulted into the middle of a detective story excites and inspires some of the circle. Bob is pressed into helping Thomasine’s unofficial investigation.

For the real-life detective Henrietta Mallin, these amateur sleuths muddy the waters. Especially as one thinks he’s a genius, one may well be a genius, and one has more in common with Lady Macbeth than Jane Austen. But Hen won’t take nonsense from any of them as she unravels the sinister secret of the circle.

UK Publisher: Time Warner Books, 2005 ISBN 0-316-72945-0
US Publisher: Soho Press, 2005 ISBN 1-56947-392-7
UK paperback: Time Warner, 2006 ISBN 0-7515-3690-3
Latest UK paperback: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553581

“The superb Peter Lovesey provides yet another novel of unalloyed delight.”
Gerald Kaufman, The Scotsman

“Lovesey, who can out-Christie Dame Agatha when he sets his mind to it, offers a smorgasbord of red herrings, a nifty plot twist, charming bits of doggerel and delicious digs at writers of the unpublishable.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Lovesey cleverly exploits the internecine rivalry that often exists between writers (or would-be writers) and brilliantly keeps one guessing.”
Carla McKay, Daily Mail

The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

For my second novel I stayed with sport as a background, this time bare-knuckle boxing. This form of pugilism was forbidden by law in late Victorian England, but Cribb discovers evidence that it continues in secret, confirmed by a headless body in the Thames whose hands were “pickled” for fighting. A young constable called Henry Jago is chosen to infiltrate the gang and he has to submit to a rigorous programme of purging, pickling and training. Moreover, Cribb needs to intervene at the crucial time to prevent young Jago from being battered to death.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1971
UK Paperback: Panther, 1972
US Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1971
US Paperback: Dell, 1972
Latest UK paperback: Sphere, 2018
Latest US paperback: Soho Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-56947-524-9

“The Detective Wore Silk Drawers will establish the Historical Thriller as securely as Mrs Christie established her own particular brand of whodunit.”
Whitefriar, Smith’s Trade News

“A gorgeous piece of period reconstruction … all the details of pickling and purging, gymnastics and ‘coming up to scratch’ worked into an exciting plot.”
Violent Grant, Daily Telegraph

“A splendid thick-ear thriller in the literal sense.”
Matthew Coady, The Guardian

“A rich and unusual mystery, with suspense enough for the most confirmed addict.”
Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

The False Inspector Dew

strong>CWA Gold Dagger Winner, 1982
Listed in Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books
Listed in Hatchards 100 Top Crime Novels
Listed in The Times 100 Best Crime Novels of the Twentieth Century
Dagger of Daggers Shortlist, 2006

It is 1921, and Alma Webster, a reader of romances, is passionately in love with her dentist, Walter Baranov. There is only one foreseeable outcome: the murder of his wife. Inspired by the real-life Dr Crippen case, they plot a way to achieve it perfectly aboard the ocean liner, Mauretania. With a fine sense of irony, Baranov takes the identity of Inspector Dew, Crippen’s nemesis, and then a murder is reported aboard the ship and the complications begin.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1982
US Publisher: Pantheon, 1982. Reissued, 1988
UK Paperback: Arrow, 1983
US paperback: Pantheon, 1982
Latest US edition: Soho Press, 2001 ISBN 1-56947-255-6
Latest UK edition: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553574

“An extraordinarily clever, fascinating novel … Compulsively readable.”
Colin Dexter, Best Books, The Week

“Absolutely riveting … I read The False Inspector Dew because I couldn’t resist it and now I wish I’d saved it for the weekend. He’s such a stylish, lucid writer, and wickedly clever as well, with a wonderful knack of springing really astonishing surprises … A masterpiece. I defy anyone to foresee the outcome.”
Ruth Rendell

“The sort of book that ought to be a bestseller and deserves to be.”
HRF Keating, The Times

“Oh, what a lovely crime this is.”
Jean M White, Washington Post Book World

“Brilliant … stunning.”
Andrew Hope, Evening Standard

“One of the cleverest crime comedies of the past few years.”
Julian Symons, Bloody Murder

“Impossible to put down … We dare you not to smile and smile again as wicked entertainer Lovesey sails through each roll and turn of the transatlantic crossing.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Lovesey’s masterpiece thus far and one of the best mysteries ever written, one that opens up new possibilities for the genre.”
James Hurt, Dictionary of Literary Biography

The House Sitter

A Peter Diamond Mystery, also introducing Hen Mallin

Macavity Award Winner, 2003
Los Angeles Times Book Prize shortlist, 2003
Barry Award shortlist, 2003

“If you were planning a murder and wanted a place to carry it out, a beach would do nicely.”

At first everyone presumed that the woman behind the windbreak was asleep. It was only when the tide was coming in, and all but lapping at her feet, that the most horrific of crimes was discovered.

The first that Bath detective Peter Diamond knows about the crime is when the victim is traced back to his city. Soon the murder enquiry becomes a joint investigation with DCI Hen Mallin. The dead woman turns out to have been a top psychologist and forensic profiler. And at the time of her death she was working on a highly classified case for the National Crime Faculty, attempting to crack the identity of a cold and clever serial killer.

UK Publisher: Little, Brown, 2003 ISBN 0-316-72531-5
US Publisher: Soho Press, 2003 ISBN 1-56947-326-9
UK Paperback: Time Warner, 2004 ISBN 0-7515 -3458-7
Latest US Paperback: Soho Press, 2004 ISBN 1-56947-360-9
Latest UK Paperback: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553611

“The writing is as smooth as polished steel, and the small touches that reveal character, especially the memorable Hen, approach genius. This is Lovesey at his best.”
Publishers Weekly

“Brusque Diamond and plain-speaking Mallin make an engaging team, and few, if any, can top Lovesey in not only creating believable red herrings and plot twists but whetting an appetite for reading the English classics from Austen to Coleridge.”
Kirkus Reviews

Peter Lovesey’s The House Sitter is a big book, but the two intriguing puzzles it presents are just right for holiday reading and there’s some entertaining interplay between the author’s regular detective, the irascible Superintendent Peter Diamond, and a feisty woman detective, in whom he has at last met his match.”
Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph