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

World Sports Book of the Year, 1968

Foreword by Harold M Abrahams

This, my first book, grew out of my strong interest in the history of athletics, It followed the careers of five great distance runners – Deerfoot, W.G.George, Alf Shrubb, Paavo Nurmi and Emil Zatopek – who competed at intervals of about twenty years from the 1860s to the 1960s. Little had been written about the first three, and Deerfoot was practically unknown, in spite of having been a sensation in his time. Each athlete was given a chapter and there were more chapters comparing them and the conditions in which they trained and competed. The foreword was written by Harold Abrahams, the Olympic champion later immortalised in Chariots of Fire.

UK Publisher: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968
US Publisher, as FIVE KINGS OF DISTANCE: St Martin’s Press, 1981
Kindle Edition: Endeavour Media, 2018

“Quite the finest piece of research into the history of athletics to appear for some time.”
World Sports, in naming it Sports Book of the Year

“It is a simply magnificent effort, certainly one of the most absorbing and revealing books on the subject of athletics that I have read.”
Athletics Weekly

“The descriptions of the George-Cummings duels are the best ever written …Brilliant writing from a brilliant work.”
Tom McNab, The Athletics Coach

“One of the most fascinating and informative books I have ever read on the history of athletics … Lovesey’s chapter on Deerfoot, certainly the least known of this quintet, is a masterpiece of reconstruction.”
David Kemsley, World Sports

“Peter Lovesey has gained a reputation as being the most outstanding writer on athletics history in the world … This is the first athletics history book that has brought alive the periods during which the five were active. I might also suggest that this is, in fact, the first real history book yet produced about athletes.”
Charles Elliott, Arena

Foreword by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

A large-format colour illustrated book that traces the history of the world’s oldest regulatory body in athletics, this was planned with Harold Abrahams (best known outside the sport for being the character played by Ben Cross in Chariots of Fire) who sadly died when it was still being written. The book is as much about the personalities of a century of athletics as it is about the organisation.

UK Publisher: Guinness Superlatives, 1979

“Better known as the creator of the Victorian cop, ‘Cribb’, Lovesey is also Britain’s leading athletics historian. In this impressive book, he tracks the sports from the 1860s … a seminal work for the sport’s appreciation.”
Pat Butcher, Time Out

“Splendidly written.”
Frank Taylor, Daily Mirror

“It is almost a bible; for the lover of athletics it is a never-ending feast garnished with superb illustrations and spiced with nice touches of anecdotal wit.”
Arthur Gold, Sport & Leisure

“The AAA have made a few blunders in their time, but in choosing Lovesey to record their years they have made their best selection.”
John Rodda, The Guardian

“A fascinating book.”
Christopher Brasher, The Observer

“Lovesey particularly succeeds in bringing his characters to life …Magnificently illustrated, it is a significant and readable addition to the history of the sport.”
Cliff Temple, The Times

“If ever a man was ideally suited to a task, it was that Peter Lovesey should be entrusted with writing the history of the oldest national governing body in the world … and he has succeeded brilliantly.”
Melvyn Watman, Athletics Weekly